


Agents and SHIELD

by Puzzled



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Worm - Wildbow
Genre: Crossover, Gen, Post-Iron Man 2, Science Fiction, Superheroes
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-07-05
Updated: 2017-12-02
Packaged: 2018-07-21 19:26:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 12
Words: 32,004
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7400833
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Puzzled/pseuds/Puzzled
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>No one knew what happened to Armsmaster. Upon finding himself in a new universe Earth Bet's sixth or seventh greatest tinker didn't really know either.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Landing

No one really knew what happened to Armsmaster.  
  
Taylor had been paying much more attention to cape news since she’d become one, not that she could have missed it even if she hadn’t. The Protectorate leader had been fighting a gang of mercenaries, one of whom had the ability to alter the landscape, when he simply vanished. The gang had been captured soon after. Armsmaster had a lot of friends, or reading between the lines, had a lot of people who owed him favors and they had come to take down those responsible for his likely death.  
  
Up until then the story had been fairly straightforward, if sad. It was only on the interrogation of the shaker, a girl whose powers had driven her somewhat insane, that they learned even she had no idea what she’d done. In her periods of lucidity she referred to drawing from other worlds. The leak of that interview transcript of a minor without a lawyer had embarrassed the local PRT, but it had led to some small hope that Armsmaster wasn’t dead, just lost.  
  
No one really believed that of course, in a world with the Endbringers hopes like that weren’t worth having. Nonetheless Dragon, who had written a heartfelt eulogy, purchased the building where Armsmaster had been lost and set up devices that were rumored to be searching through alternate universes. Nothing seemed to come of it.  
  
As time went by people, and Taylor, thought less of the incident. The Simurgh attack was enough to push it even from local news, and Taylor’s costume was nearing completion. If as a tribute to a hero she admired as a child her armor had a slightly blueish sheen, well she thought it looked good and made her slightly less villainous looking.  
  
Sneaking out of the house and calling a swarm around her was everything she’d hoped for as she moved deeper into the city. She knew the docks were a rougher area, but they also had the building Dragon had taken over. If worst came to worse she could just flee there and use the defenses the tinker had installed to save herself, they’d already proven themselves against the Merchants.  
  
After a fruitless hour it turned out she wasn’t the first to have that idea. She heard the explosions with her own ears first, she still didn’t have a good grasp on her bugs’ senses. Once she knew something was coming her power gave her a pretty good picture though. Lizard monster things with riders were fleeing a rather different lizard monster thing, a fire breathing dragon in fact. From the brief contact her bugs made with the supervillain he was already surrounded by rock hard scales and gouts of flame washed over him.  
  
She looked to her tools, pepper spray wasn’t going to cut it. A moment of indecision gripped her. Taylor had gone out to be a hero, but she knew she didn’t have a chance against Lung. She turned to flee- then pulled up short.  
  
An armored suit was standing behind her, over her, and was looking down at her with glowing eyes.  
  
“Hello there.” The voice was female but other than that non-descript. “You’re new.”  
  
Taylor’s thoughts ground to a halt, then rallied. “Lung’s coming!” It might not have been the ideal introduction, she’d pictured handing over an entire gang tied with spiderweb or something else suitably impressive, but at the time it seemed important to share the pertinent details.  
  
Dragon’s suit seemed to stiffen as its head turned to look towards the approaching villains. “Yes, and.. the Undersiders. Perhaps you should seek shelter?”  
  
All around them turrets rose from the buildings, Dragon had apparently further fortified the area since the Merchants had visited. Her suit had taken on a glossy sheen as well. Taylor’s bugs were suddenly unable to grip the metal that felt like a liquid.  
  
“On second thought, too late.” A door to the building whooshed open, and Dragon’s suit pointed at it with one limb. “Unless you have enhanced strength or speed you need to go in there.”  
  
Taylor looked back, the light of Lung’s flames were visible, and nodded. She didn’t need to be outside to help, her bugs would do the fighting for her. She broke into a run to the door just as thrusters seemed to unfurl from Dragon’s suit’s back and launched her into the air.  
  
The door slammed shut behind her as a single sharp crack split the air. Her bugs were disoriented by it, but she forced them to focus. Dragon’s suit was in the air, flying in tight circles as it fired something at Lung who had abandoned his pursuit of the others in favor of battling the tinker. She tried to swarm him with her bugs, but between the shockwaves of Dragon’s weapon and the flames very few made it. Those that did bit, but based on how fast the gaping holes Dragon was leaving in him healed she doubted that her venom did anything.  
  
She was transfixed enough by her bugs that the sudden sparking behind her startled her, a sphere of pure black was rapidly growing and emitting bolts of lightning at the sensors focused on the site of Armsmaster’s disappearance. For a moment she was afraid that the sphere would keep expanding and consume her, but it slowed once it was about ten feet in diameter and the crackling electricity died down.  
  
Taylor palmed her pepper spray and tried to draw bugs to her, but the building was nearly impenetrable after Dragon’s improvements. There wasn’t much she could do but wait, well wait and hide so that’s what she did, ducking behind something she thought might be a generator.  
  
She was just in time. Heavy footsteps, no two sets of heavy footsteps emerged from the sphere, before they both stopped.  
  
“So this is where you came from then? From your story I had imagined it to be a bit more dilapidated.”  
  
Another voice, one she recognized from the news answered. “Doubtless they were trying to see what happened to me. I recognize some of this equipment-”  
  
“Dimensional stuff, yeah, it’s responding to the harmonics. I think ours turned out better-”  
  
Whatever else the man was going to say was interrupted by Dragon’s suit smashing through the ceiling. Lung followed, more deserving of the tinker’s name than man now, punching his own hole through the wall while wreathed in flame. Through sheer luck the generator shielded Taylor from the burning debris, but it wouldn’t for long.  
  
“What the hell is that Colin!” Two spears of light smashed Lung into the wall, but it only seemed to make him mad as he rebounded from the crater he left. His roar was loud enough to shake the air, before a second set of the lasers hit him in the open mouth.  
  
“Codenames Iron Man!” Pencil thin beams stuttered out then, hitting Lung in the eyes over and over again, making the brute shield his face with a heavily scaled arm. “We need to end this now! He only gets stronger!”  
  
“Can do!” Red beams sliced forth, and Lung’s limbs simply fell. His torso hit the ground surrounded by his separated legs but it didn’t put him down, he writhed forward serpentine with flames gathering in his mouth. Taylor stood to run, this fight was beyond her, and she got her first look at the combatants.They were both armored, one in the blue and gray associated with Armsmaster and the other in bright red and gold. The other must be Iron Man.  
  
“So if you’ve got something Co- Armsmaster,” Iron Man tried his lasers again but they didn’t seem to penetrate this time. Lung’s face was split but it was regrowing into something alien, and his limbs weren’t far behind. “Because I didn’t bring any city-busters.”  
  
Armsmaster didn’t answer, instead leaping forward assisted by rockets from his boots. His halberd rose, and then he slammed Lung with the butt. The villain froze, his flames flickering out instantly.  
  
“Nice one, so-”  
  
“It won’t last long!” Get the girl out of here!”  
  
Iron Man nodded, and with a long hop he was next to her. “Don’t get too excited sweetheart.” He grabbed her around the chest and surged into the air. Beneath them the rapidly receding Armsmaster was still holding his weapon onto the frozen Lung, but something else was moving before they were out of view. Air rushed around them as Iron Man sank down onto a brightly lit street and dropped her. “Love the costume! If heroing doesn’t work out give that a shot.” The last words were shouted as he rocketed back into the sky, curving back towards the fight.  
  
Taylor didn’t really know what to do, the few people out at two in the morning were looking at with awe. Part of her wanted to go back, but her rational side quashed it. She couldn’t do anything to help, and saving her had already cost Armsmaster an ally. All she could do was hope, or she could go back and wait for the fight to finish. Pulling a shroud of bugs around her made her feel a little less exposed as she started jogging towards the flames. Lung didn’t often kill heroes, but he did put them down hard. If any of the tinkers lost they might need help, and she knew a little first aid.  
  


_____

  
Armsmaster wasn’t an idiot. He knew that statement was often proof of the opposite, but he’d done enough and passed enough tests to know that he was smart, even ignoring his power. That also meant he was at least somewhat aware of what other people thought of him. Socially stunted, a glory hound, desperate, and worst of all, fading.  
  
No one said that to his face of course, and to the public he made sure to always present an unassailable image, but he knew what his subordinates and colleagues thought. As long as it didn’t impact their performance he just didn’t care. He’d given up a lot to be a hero, his colleagues’ admiration or affection was just one more thing. He couldn’t deny that finding himself on the side of the road somewhere in the northern hemisphere with no contact with anyone made their opinions a little less important.  
  
“System start transcription. Mark the time and designate it as patrol forty-three fifty one.” He’d written the software to record his dictated reports years ago and had found it useful in a variety of situations. Human memories were flawed, and there were powers that warped them even further. Having a recording of his thoughts in addition to what he said and saw had been extremely useful in devising counters to new parahumans on several occasions. It was also a slight indulgence to monologue.  
  
“After battling the parahuman gang under the criminal mercenary Faultline’s leadership as described in patrol forty-three fifty I’ve found myself in an unknown location with no communications with Protectorate ENE. Working hypothesis is that Labyrinth, shaker 12, is in some way responsible.”  
  
Before he’d found himself here the fight had been going so well. He didn’t know what Faultline was up to, but he’d managed to get past Newter almost effortlessly at the cost of a single containment foam grenade. He’d found Labyrinth alone then, already starting to warp the landscape. He’d tranquilized her as foam alone wouldn’t hold her and it was safer than knocking her unconscious. Things after that were a blur, quite literally and his senses had only cleared up when he found himself at the side of the road. He’d already reviewed the camera footage, it had matched quite well with his memory.  
  
“GPS system is not operating, onboard diagnostics confirm its functionality.” He wasn’t in Brockton Bay, that’s for sure, the plants around him showed no signs of winter. “Testing stellar navigation system.” His HUD told him to look to the sky and he did, the infrared cameras attempting to identify the stars and their position. The north star gave him his latitude and a quick comparison of the sun’s position and the time gave him his longitude. “Stellar navigation appears operable, current location 30.52 N, 97.62 W, just outside of Round Rock Texas, and as predicted,” Armsmaster turned and saw the road sign, “on US route 79.”  
  
“Communications are down, despite being within nominal range of the local Protectorate and PRT branches.” On a whim he toggled on his FM receiver, pop music flooded his headphones and he shut it off. “Over the air radio works, television,” the square in his display that should have shown a channel listing was blank, although he could tell he was receiving signals in the proper frequency range. “Not operable.”  
  
The sun was beating down on him, and armor that was comfortable in a northeastern winter was rather less so under the Texan sun. Luckily it wasn’t that warm yet, but moving off the road and into the shade only seemed prudent. He also took a drink from the water tank integrated into his armor, it was important to stay hydrated.  
  
“Two hypotheses present themselves. First, Labyrinth and her allies have up until now concealed the true abilities and I’m currently locked in an elaborate simulation, possibly aided by Newter’s secretions. I judge that unlikely, though obviously non-falsifiable.” Armsmaster pulled up a few more sensor readouts and added the screenshot to the report. “Second, I’ve been transported to a parallel universe, designated Earth Gimel. This conclusion is based on several divergences in communications protocols and a notable lack of Behemoth induced atmospheric radiation. In either case I shall proceed with the approved Protectorate plan for first contact with parallel universes.”  
  
It was just his luck that it would involve a walk.  
  


_____  


Armsmaster bypassed Round Rock despite the slowly increasing temperature. From the brief summary stored on his onboard navigation he’d expected it to be larger, but several roads and the police station weren’t where they were supposed to be. He suspected that the cities had seen less of an exodus in a world without Endbringers, which was inconvenient. The larger roads seemed to match up well, the vagaries of terrain ensured that, but he’d have to find new maps at some point instead of relying on his armor’s memory.  
  
He’d also have to write entirely new protocols for his suit, that would be irritating. The world seemed close to Bet which was encouraging, there were no doubt many subtle changes but he could hope that he wouldn’t be starting from scratch. Computer languages were likely to be similar, C++ dated back to just prior to Scion’s arrival, but there were a hundred ways to solve most computer problems and it was extremely unlikely that two worlds had chanced upon the same ones. Even Aleph, hypothetically the closest world, had divergences even if the communication between universes had begun to remove them.  
  
Dragon wouldn’t have had that problem he was sure. He’d never met anyone who was as fast at coding as her. She’d probably already have something to get internet access. Just because she was better didn’t mean he couldn’t take a crack at it though. He was perfectly capable of typing while walking, and he was currently far enough off from the road that the motorists wouldn’t spot him.  
  
Spinning up his secondary hard drive, it was slower and held nonessential programs, he pulled up CableCroc and started searching for network traffic. The frequencies used for cellular traffic and Wi-Fi were both busy, however as he’d feared they were gibberish. He tried running through older standards, hoping that one of them would roughly match, but he didn’t have any luck. The signals were probably encrypted anyway, he didn’t doubt that he could get into the system but it would take more time and brainpower than he could spare while walking down the highway.  
  
Closing the program after setting it to record incoming signals let him move his arms freely again. He’d incorporated haptic feedback into his gloves to further simulate a keyboard, but ever since Clockblocker had started calling him the T-rex typist he’d been reluctant to use it. It was a relief to let his arms swing as he walked though. He still had a few miles, but he’d probably be picked up by police once he entered the city limits. With his halberd on his back and his power armor he’d be noticed and it would prompt a call. Hopefully he wouldn’t have much trouble explaining himself. Once any of his equipment was examined its strangeness would be evident, at that point he’d be bumped up the chain.  
  
That would still leave him trapped in an alternate universe, but he doubted that Faultline’s crew would be able to evade the full force of the Protectorate. Once they had Labyrinth in custody a deal would be worked out for her to open a portal. She would need her rating adjusted, but Shaker 12 didn’t leave much room for improvement. Failing that, he’d seen some of Haywire’s work. If he had nothing to distract him he could probably get back himself.  
  
He didn’t even have to vocalize the thought for Murphy to strike. A red light- one of the very scary red lights in his HUD- lit up and hours of training took over. He sprinted into the woods, drawing his halberd and extending it to ts full length. Two eye twitches and a chin nod activated his emergency transmitter before he set it to an adaptive jamming protocol. Someone or something had a targeting radar painting him and it was only the dry grass that prevented him from shooting a flare to obscure his thermal signature.  
  
It might have been futile anyway, he was running through the woods and somehow the radar was still tracking him even as he blanketed the airwaves with noise. Suddenly he was in a clearing, someone’s backyard and he spun, halberd in front of him as he swept the sky. He hadn’t heard a helicopter, and if a jet was low enough to target him specially he would have noticed it. That left a drone of some sort, and those could be the next best thing to invisible with the proper camouflage systems.  
  
Armsmaster killed his jamming, it was clearly useless and turned on his own radar. His halberd functioned as an antennae to amplify the signal and he began sweeping the sky before it was immediately unnecessary. The drone, no the suit, dropped out of the sky in front of him, standing on jets of flame.  
  
For a moment they just stared at each other, Armsmaster kept his halberd pointed just away from the bright red armor before the other tinker cut his rockets and dropped to the ground.  
  
“So who are you supposed to be?” The amplified voice was curious. “I didn’t realize that we had any other entrepreneurs building their own suits.”  
  
The presence of a parahuman wasn’t entirely unexpected, and in some ways it even made his task easier. However that didn’t mean that the tinker was friendly, or even not a villain. Parahumans were driven to conflict, and in a world where they lacked worthy opponents that might mean they just fought everyone.  
  
“Going for the silent crusader sort of thing then?” Colin hadn’t thought he’d taken that long to consider his answer, but the other man forged on. “I’m not sure it really fits with running through the woods. I think you need a cape, a dark skyscraper and maybe some personal tra-”  
  
“I’m Armsmaster.” He set his halberd’s haft onto the ground in an effort to look non threatening while still keeping it in position. “Leader of the Protectorate ENE. Who are you?” His title was meaningless here, but if the other parahuman was associated with an organization it might help build common ground.  
  
“Really?” The man almost seemed offended. “You’re prancing around in armor and you don’t recognize me?” The suit’s faceplate flipped open revealing a middle aged man. “I’m Tony Stark. You know? Iron Man.”  
  
Secret identities apparently weren’t a thing here. Armsmaster wasn’t about to reciprocate, even ignoring the fact that he couldn’t as his helmet was a solid forging. “Are you a representative of the government?”  
  
“You really don’t follow the news do you?” Stark tilted his head quizzically. “Your armor is pretty impressive for a shut-in, but the last guy I met literally built his in a shack in Russia so I guess it’s not impossible.”  
  
Equivocation meant no, even though his lie detector hadn’t flagged any statements yet. It was still experimental though. “So you don’t represent the government of the United States.”  
  
“Nope.” He popped the p in a way that seemed calculated to be annoying. “Just a red-blooded American doing my part to keep the nation safe. You seriously missed all of this?”  
  
Well he claimed to be good, and the lie detector was still silent so he was probably telling the truth. Even if he wasn’t Armsmaster had seen a terrified face through the window of the house they were in the backyard of. The police would probably be here soon. “Yes, and there’s a simple explanation that may seem unbelievable. I’m from-”  
  
“A parallel universe! Do they not use Cs over there? Did Dewey defeat Truman? Or,” Stark paused, jubilant, “are there airships?”  
  
“Yes, no, no, and they’re infrequent.” The logical leap was surprising, but they might have encountered other worlds before. “I’m an agent of law enforcement on Earth Bet and-”  
  
“You guys big on gambling? Or could you not snag Aleph?”  
  
Ignoring Assault often was the best move, something that seemed likely to work well here as well. “I’ve been transported here through unknown means. We are in contact with Earth Aleph, and it was designated as the first as they mostly lacked an obvious divergence, namely parahumans.”  
  
“Parahumans?” The curiosity was back in Stark’s voice. “People with what? Superpowers?”  
  
“Exactly.” Sirens were just becoming audible through his suits auditory enhancements, so Armsmaster lifted and retracted his halberd before the police arrived. Having visible weapons in hand was usually just the thing to make them uncomfortable. “I guess you have them as well?”  
  
“Special people? They’re crawling out of the woodwork these days.” Stark seemed to notice the sirens as well, twisting fluidly to look over his shoulder. His armor was beautiful, even if Armsmaster didn’t have a clue how he was powering it. Already he’d spotted several improvements he could incorporate into his own, as well as a few possible upgrades for Stark’s. He’d have to know a bit more before he suggested them though, often tinkers had a reason for the things they did.  
  
“I presume the police will recognize you then?” Stark nodded, slightly distracted. Armsmaster considered using his directional microphone to try to eavesdrop but he didn’t think it would be especially useful since Stark’s ears weren’t visible. “Will you vouch for me with them? We have protocols for first contact and-”  
  
“I can do you one better actually. We’ve got an organization here that snaps up all sorts of special people. I’ll tell the cops you’re with me, a failed field test or something, and I’ll take you with me so you can get the full picture.” Stark’s faceplate flipped down and his harsher amplified voice returned. “Fury and SHIELD would think they’re the correct people for you, but I’m not as sure. I’ll fill you in, or give you the tools so you can find out yourself, and if you disagree they’re only a phone call away.”  
  
He seemed sincere, but there was so much Armsmaster didn’t know about this world. Trusting Stark might work out, but he wasn’t willing to bet the Protectorate’s relationship with this world entirely on a promising lie detector and an alleged vigilante hero.  
  
“I do appreciate it, however I do have orders for this situation. Last time nearly kicked off an interdimensional war, I’m disinclined to take chances.” A police car just then came racing up the street before screeching to a halt.  
  
“Well maybe that’s wise then.” Stark seemed to accept his reasoning. “Give me a call when you can though. If they don’t let you and try to disappear you I’ll do my best to get you out. The cops at least will be pretty polite if I say you’re cool.”  
  
“Very well then.” Armsmaster started walking slowly towards the front of the house, Iron Man at his side. The suburban police officers froze when they saw them, so he took his last immediate chance to talk to his fellow tinker. “How are you powering that thing anyway? Even our best fusion reactors would mean you were missing limbs or organs in that.”  
  
Stark’s smirk was audible. “Who says I'm not?”  
  


_____

  
The local police had been quick to transport him to the Austin FBI branch, especially after Stark had vouched for him. He’d surrendered his halberd after carefully ensuring it was completely locked down and warning the agents not to mess with it. He didn’t think they’d be able to do anything to it without extensive time and effort, but the fuel cells were extremely energetic and sufficient violence towards them could have negative effects on the surrounding areas. The FBI had been less certain what to do after that, so he was now waiting in an interview room with a cup of lukewarm water watching the agents panic through their one way mirror.  
  
Their confusion was entirely understandable, if a little irritating, but Armsmaster had found a way to entertain himself. Stark had apparently noticed that his suit’s systems operated on entirely separate standard when they met. He was sure if he reviewed the transmission logs he’d discover intrusion attempts, but as he was squeezing himself into the squad card his suit had flagged a transmission using a thoroughly archaic protocol. Reviewing the data in a separate quarantined virtual machine had revealed it to be extensive text files, everything from wireless standards to a brief history of the modern world and the few extant parahumans. It was a thoughtful gesture, and coding his own version of this universe’s WiFi was enough to occupy him while he waited.  
  
At last, after after forty minutes of furious coding which had let him start to make sense of the various networks around him, his ultrasonics alerted him to someone walking down the hall towards his room. The observation chamber through the mirrored glass had also filled up, so Armsmaster reluctantly closed his editor and straightened up and waited for whoever was coming to enter.  
  
The man who came in could have been pulled from any bureaucracy Armsmaster had ever dealt with. He had the look of a man whose primary concern was the correct filing of income tax forms, but there were signs of martial training that Armsmaster’s long experience revealed. Well subtle signs and the gun in the shoulder holster that his millimeter band radar had highlighted. He wasn’t sure why Dragon objected to him having that on all the time, it efficiently penetrated clothing to reveal weapons as well as a wide variety of Strangers. He was in an entirely different world now though, he felt confident he wouldn’t find her riding along watching his video feeds and making snide comments this time.  
  
The man seated himself and put the documents he was holding down on the table, slowly fanning them out. Armsmaster recognized it as a stalling tactic designed to keep the initiative in the agent’s hands and used the time to pull up Stark’s dossiers. In the data packet he’d included a cursory summary of several hundred people. They couldn’t be entirely relied upon, but if the agent was one of the listed individuals it could be helpful. The ASCII headshots were a nice touch as well.  
  
After a moment where the agent seemed to be ignoring him while reading the papers but was actually keeping Armsmaster at the edge of his peripherals he straightened and put his hands on the table. It was a gesture meant to build trust, one that would work better if Armsmaster wasn’t aware of the numerous agents waiting outside the door and in the observation room who were shifting nervously.  
  
“Good afternoon Armsmaster, I’m Special Agent Phil Coulson of the FBI.” If it hadn’t been for his lie detector he would never have questioned the statement. The program had only been triggered by the last part of the sentence though, he was likely a member of another group of the executive. He hadn’t lied about his name though, so Armsmaster ran a search through Stark’s file and had to work to suppress his reaction to what he found. If the agent, apparently a member of some sort of quasi-national secret police if Stark could be believed, noticed he didn’t say anything. “I’ve reviewed your file and I think it’s fair to say I have a few questions.”  
  
Stark could be right or wrong, either way he’d go forward with the first contact protocol’s directives. “Please proceed, I’ll answer all questions permitted by my current orders.” The plans had foreseen possible duplicity and thus included instructions to avoid mentioning any weaknesses to possible adversaries. No one really expected a world freshly meeting other universes to invade Earth Bet, who’d want to be anywhere the Endbringers were? But there was no point in oversharing.  
  
“Excellent, I’ll try to make this as painless as possible.” The lie detector’s readout was a slight comfort, before Coulson launched into an impressively thorough interrogation. At last, after literal hours that didn’t seem to trouble the faux bureaucrat at all, Armsmaster had had enough.  
  
“Agent Coulson are you permitted to negotiate on behalf of the United States government?”  
  
Coulson kept taking notes as he answered, “Armsmaster, surely you understand that we have procedures prior to allowing you to meet with ranking members of the government. Your story is somewhat outlandish you’ll agree.” The agent’s words didn’t contain lies, but they didn’t contain an answer either.  
  
If he wanted to test the agent against Stark’s dossier he’d have to start asking more direct questions. Directly questioning Coulson’s SHIELD affiliation would reveal too much, knowledge was power, but there were other more oblique approaches.  
  
“Is the FBI going to decide when I can speak with someone with authority?”  
  
“We’re only in charge of finding out more information. The ultimate decision will not be made by the FBI.” His detector was useless, and worse the agent seemed more alert now that Armsmaster had broken the pattern. “The sooner you answer our questions, the sooner you can meet with others.”  
  
Coulson wasn’t a member of the FBI and was deliberately stringing him along, Armsmaster was certain of that. However he didn’t really have a choice but to accept it. At the moment violence was out of the question, and even if it weren’t he wasn’t too sure of his chances of cleanly escaping an FBI branch office. His SLAM program had built a floor plan, but even after he subdued all agents in his path he’d still be trapped in a world with no funds nor resources. Tinkers were especially vulnerable to being caught during their gearing up period and Armsmaster was no different. No, he’d be patient for now and work on establishing communications to the outside world.  
  
Thankfully after another hour of questions Coulson seemed satisfied. “I think we’re done for today, your cooperation has been appreciated.” The agent stood, gathered his notes and smiled before opening the door to let two others in. “These gentlemen will show you to your room, would you like anything special?”  
  
“Water will be sufficient.” He had emergency nutrient gels in his armor, they saved time that could be better spent instead of eating and he wasn’t entirely sure he trusted the food here to be safe. Stark’s notes about SHIELD had included a wide variety of speculation and he wasn’t entirely willing to trust his health to their good nature. He’d be sleeping in his armor for the foreseeable future, conveniently his bodysuit was designed to be anti-microbial as well as anti-odor.  
  
Ever since he read Dune he’d always wanted a stillsuit. His under-armor wasn’t quite that but it did incorporate many of the innovations he’d invented while making one. It was somewhat lucky that he had been transported here when he was, his next iteration was going to remove many of the features in favor of improved armor that would allow him to reduce his suits overall weight.  
  
The two agents led him to a small on base apartment, likely for witness protection or something similar, ushered him in and then closed and locked the door. Armsmaster looked around the room, it could have been in any hotel in America, ignoring the lack of windows. There was the requested case of bottled water on a desk, but something else caught his eye. There were wires on the desk, a cabinet and the bedside table, all with their matching devices removed. They apparently didn’t want to leave anyway for him to communicate with the outside world, if he hadn’t been a tinker it might have worked.  
  
A quick glance at the water told him it could wait until later, his first priority was to locate any bugs and recharge his armor. It had been a long and frustrating day, at this point all he really wanted to do was sketch new designs inspired by Stark’s armor, so he had a harder than usual time of not using his first anti-eavesdropping device, a short radius EMP.  
  
Instead, he pulled up a scanning program to check for radio emitters and then began emitting regular ultrasonic pulses across a variety of wavelengths. The microphones would either resonate with the pulses or transmit in response to the noise, that would let him locate them even if they weren’t actively sending information. The cameras were easy to spot, his visor could look through the same IR transparent screens they did. There didn’t seem to be any blind spots, that was unwelcome but hardly unexpected. He’d just have to restrict his activities.  
  
Using a wall outlet to charge his armor was a usage case he’d planned for, it was just irritating compared to the rapid chargers in his lab. That would be one of the first things he replicated here, being able to minimize his suit’s downtime was essential. His only solace was that he could use his productively and continue writing the wireless communication protocols for access to the world.  
  
It went quickly, as he made more progress he noticed similarities between his world’s version and theirs which allowed him to skip most of the work. He was about to start working on an extremely basic internet browser when he noticed a final note in the standard. Stark had included a hidden network’s name and password. Initializing a new virtual machine he connected to the network and shortly after received a packet of information, as well as something more immediately interesting, Coulson’s report on him to a Director Fury.  
  


_____

  
After the second full day of questioning Armsmaster had had enough. He liked to think of himself as somewhat stoic, able to endure hardships without complaint, but there were only so many times he could go over the minutia of the Protectorate that he was cleared to share. Coulson was unceasing though, asking the same questions over and over throughout the interview. He was trying to get more information than Armsmaster was willing to share, and just recognizing the tactic didn’t make it ineffective. Coulson kept jumping back and forth, prying and searching for more or discrepancies. His lie detector was calibrated now, and Armsmaster was confident Coulson believed his story, but the agent just didn’t stop.  
  
His patience was coming to an end, along with his tolerance for staying in his armor. Stilsuit or no, after sixty odd hours it was beginning to smell decidedly musty. It was time to get out. Taking advantage of Stark’s wireless network and the agent’s coffee break Armsmaster started to more actively penetrate the building’s firewalls.  
  
What he found was disconcerting, his accumulated file was gone, there was no record of him being present and the sole mention of any ‘visitor’ was an NSA consultant. He was familiar enough with government agencies to know they were sustained by paper trails, the sudden lack of one anywhere in the FBI database for him didn’t fill him with confidence. Stark had shared enough about SHIELD that he was reluctant to give them the benefit of the doubt, especially if they were lying to the FBI. Coupled with the numerous agents just outside the door and filling the rooms around them, his prototype ranged EKG doubled nicely as a way to see through walls, he felt justified in a little paranoia.  
  
“Agent Coulson.” He cut the man off before he could ask another question. “I believe it’s time for us to lay our cards on the table. I know you’re not affiliated with the FBI in any capacity.” He stood, in his armor he towered over the man even from across the table, and took a step towards the door. “I’ve cooperated with SHIELD,” he’d always be grateful to Stark just for causing Coulson’s slight surprise at his knowledge, “long enough.” He took another step towards the door, his newly activated sonar showing the agents behind it backpedaling nervously. “My incarceration is at an end one way or another. I will be going to address the Governor now.” He reached for the door, watching for any sign from Coulson.  
  
It was a bluff, but he had one more card to play before things permanently escalated, his halberd. He sent the signal for it to boot up and hopefully make them think twice. He’d added sound effects to increase its intimidation by an unmeasurable amount, although he estimated it was twenty percent. It didn’t signal back though, which unless it had been placed in a faraday cage or had been moved- when was the last time it had sent a status update?  
  
Coulson was saying something, but this was more important. If they’d taken his halberd despite promising not to- it’s last check-in had been a day ago, still with 92% battery. His halberd was gone. Coupled with the deletions one conclusion was seeming far more plausible. Coulson didn’t quail when he spun back towards him, which spoke volumes about his character, but Armsmaster didn’t need his opponents to fear him. “What will it be Agent?”  
  
Even with the threat Coulson didn’t seemed phased, something Armsmaster would have approved of in most circumstances, but his actions told the story. His left hand was moving towards a panic button and his right for his shoulder holster. The foam grenade didn’t let him get either and then Armsmaster had other concerns.  
  
He grabbed the door a bare instant before the agents outside could burst in, his boosted strength kept the door from opening as they smashed into the solid steel. “System, cut it.” The environmental systems for the building were disturbingly open, so much that he had almost added a firewall for the taxpayers, but that laxness worked for him. The sudden complete darkness, he’d managed to take out the emergency lights too, stunned his opponents and he used the confusion to his advantage.  
  
He ripped the door open, the closest agent fell onto him before his gauntlet’s taser knocked him out. From there it was simple. He could see, they couldn’t and even past that he was wearing power armor while being just as well trained as they were. He was through the hallway and the squad in seconds before breaking into a run.  
  
The running clock on his HUD told him fifteen seconds had taken place since his breakout, he probably had a minute more before the FBI and SHIELD got their acts together and he needed to be gone by then. He was on the fifth floor but his worm had locked every single door in the base. Most potential adversaries would be trapped in their offices. The stairs were an option but they were on the exterior of the building and had windows, he wouldn’t have darkness there.  
  
It was a price he’d have to pay. His sprint took him to the stairs and a single punch smashed the door’s lock before he hurdled the bannister. Screams greeted him as he bounced down the stairwell, his armor charging with each cushioned landing. Eighteen seconds later he was on the ground floor busting out into the lobby. A near panicked guard saw him- an adaptive tranquilizer dropped him before his gun was even up and Armsmaster didn’t break his stride as he smashed through the glass doors into the bright sunlight.  
  
Here was where his plan started to break down, Stark had included several programs that remotely started cars and a cursory analysis had made their functions seem probable, but a car chase wasn’t what he wanted. Despite SHIELD’s duplicity he didn’t doubt that the FBI would make every effort to bring him in, and they’d bring the entire force of the state with them. Nonetheless he leaped into a blacked out Suburban and sent Stark’s second program which would brick the others’ computers. With a squeal of rubber he was out of the parking lot, avoiding the guards and spike strip by the simple expedient of driving on the grass.  
  
Swerving onto a northern highway he signaled for Stark, hopefully the tinker was as good as he claimed or his escape was going to be a real short trip.  
  
“Stay on 183.” Stark was talking almost before the connection had been established. “There’s an APB out for that car right now but I’m interfering with the highway cameras and there aren’t any cops near you.”  
  
“Roger that.” The acceleration of the Suburban wasn’t anything like what his motorcycle could do, but there was something satisfying about being behind a roaring V8. “What’s the next step?”  
  
“You’re going to get as far north as you can without discovery, and then you’re ditching that piece of junk.”  
  
“And then?” He’d always liked car chases, he rarely got the chance due to his responsibilities and focus on parahumans but as he swerved around a particularly offensive vehicle he was wondering if he should give Squealer or Leet some tips.  
  
“Well if you’re still insistent on meeting with the government we’ll do that, but if you meant immediately you’ll change cars and we’ll drive to the airport.” From the background noise it sounded as if Stark were driving too. “Speaking of, what soured you on the various agents?”  
  
“When SHIELD deleted all of the FBI’s records about me I decided I’d better go before I followed suit.”  
  
“So SHIELD got their grubby little hands involved? Figures. Who was it?”  
  
“Agent Coulson, the dossiers were appreciated.” Traffic was thinning out as he raced north, the onboard navigation was showing greater spaces between roads as he moved further from Austin.  
  
“Well I hope you didn’t hit him too hard, despite his slimy ways he’s not entirely terrible.”  
  
“I left him uninjured but covered in containment foam,” a problem crossed his mind, “that they’ll have no way to easily dissolve.”  
  
“If anyone deserves to be glued to the floor its him I assure you.”  
  
A disturbance in the road behind him distracted him from ways to synthetize the solution, a car was coming up fast. “Stark, I’ve got company.”  
  
It was a smaller car, something that could easily outrun his own lumbering vehicle. His mass advantage would ordinarily be useful, except he had kept his escape entirely non-lethal thus far and car crashes at speed were usually the opposite.  
  
“I see them; you’ve got a minute. Any tricks?”  
  
A quick review of his arsenal was disappointing. He had one foam grenade left, a micro EMP, nutrient paste and taser rounds. Keeping most of his offensive equipment in his halberd was a decision he was going to have to revisit.  
  
Foam was strong, but it wasn’t strong enough to stop a racing car, except by possibly overheating the engine or blinding the driver. The EMP would certainly do the job, but computers ran so much in modern cars. It would be better than sideswiping them, but not by much. A quick scan of the car didn’t show anything useful, and now the chasing car was uncomfortably close. The driver was an intent redhead and the passenger seemed to be assembling something, a weapon of some sort. Well that stepped things up a notch.  
  
He slammed on the brakes, dropping from north of a hundred to fifty as the brakes protested. His pursuer matched his maneuver, but pulled up alongside. The passenger and he locked eyes, whatever weapon he’d been toying with was discarded for a pistol, and the passenger was helpfully rolling down his window to clear his shot.  
  
His armor’s strength made things like that unnecessary. His elbow smashed the driver side window just before his last foam grenade rifled across the distance between cars. The agent was fast, his gun was moving instantly, but human reactions weren’t good enough to beat his throw. The grenade exploded, spilling rapidly expanding liquid across both of the agents as Armsmaster floored it. They couldn’t follow as their entire car filled with containment foam, the driver had the foresight to hit the brakes before the windshield was completely covered.  
  
“They’ve been dealt with.” He had to shout to be heard over the wind noise, yet another reason to get a full face mask. PR had rejected it, but in an entirely different world he was beyond their reach.  
  
“You really do go for the Robocop vibe. They’re alright?” Stark’s background noise was gone though, it sounded as if he’d reached their planned rendezvous and stopped.  
  
“I only injured their pride. Now what?”  
  
“Take the next exit, it’s time to get off the roads.” Armsmaster cut across the lanes and just barely avoided clipping the crash barrels. “And if you’ve got anyway to ditch the car such that whatever bugs in are wrecked, like a river or a fire or a- “  
  
“I’ll handle it.” If there was one advantage to evading the duly authorized agents of the law it was that he was able to use whatever munitions he wanted, looks like he was getting to use his EMP afterall.


	2. Settling

  
The EMP was exactly as satisfactory as he’d hoped it would be. From a safe distance of twenty meters the car simply seemed to stall as the pulse wrecked the engine’s injection control and presumably everything else that relied on transistors or integrated circuits. The FBI could conceivably have hardened their electronics, the PRT had, but it seemed like overkill for a world largely without parahumans. In any case what he was about to do would further complicate things.  
  
Cars were designed to be rolled by humans in a pinch, the rolling resistance was meant to be low enough in neutral that a stalled car could be dealt with. His power armor was more than equal to the task as he gave the suburban a long hard push that sent it careening down into a pond just off the road. The FBI would need a lot of luck to get anything out of a flooded car quickly, even without the EMP.  
  
“Finished up? Because sooner or later they’re going to realize the cameras didn’t see you.” Stark had been watching from his car parked just off the road. “And while they won’t be able to prove it was me I’m certainly a reasonable suspect.”  
  
“We’re good to go.” The other tinker nodded and ducked into the driver’s seat, Armsmaster was able to fold himself into the passenger side with the seat as far back as it would go. He barely had the door shut before they were rolling and accelerating in a much more agreeable fashion than his previous ride. He would have felt guilty about his armor pressing on the leather except that Stark could obviously afford it.  
  
“So they had you for two days, and then started acting like they were going to disappear you?” Stark was hitting the apexes of every turn with complete disregard for the yellow lines, his car using a mix of sensors to check for obstacles around otherwise blind curves as they kept to the backroads. “I know I badmouthed SHIELD a bit, but that’s pretty brazen. It might be that I’m just too high profile for them though.”  
  
“They also appropriated my halberd.” Back on Bet that wouldn’t have been as big a deal, in addition to his spares every single one had a locater chip. Unfortunately, the locators relied on satellites that weren’t orbiting this world. “I doubt they’ll be able to use it, but it has some technologies I’d prefer not to get into anyone else’s hands.”  
  
“Yeah, I know the feeling.” They shot onto a highway, Stark apparently deciding that it was safe, a decision probably aided by the car changing colors as they merged. “Like that? I built it to dodge paparazzi, but it turned out that there are only so many R8s running around Malibu and they all hold interesting people.”  
  
It was a nice chameleon effect, perhaps a little slow for active camouflage, but it certainly could work for some applications. “How does it work?” Heat was an obvious suspect, except the color was constant across the car’s body.  
  
“I didn’t make it, but it’s analogous to E-ink,” Stark seemed to realize that trademarks weren’t multi-universal, “microencapsulated electrophoretic ink, the wrappings receive a charge and I only get two colors. No pixels yet, but I have high hopes for the next generation.”  
  
Armsmaster could picture it, a charge pulling the molecules to the surface, they must be suspended somehow inside the car’s wrap. Pixels were an obvious next step and that would allow for the sort of camouflage he was envisioning.  
  
“So what’s so special in your halberd? Also why do you have one?” A grin crossed his face, “scratch that, why do you use one? As I recall halberdiers are only in the Vatican these days.”  
  
“Primarily appearances, but it is an extremely versatile weapon for hand to hand combat.” His halberd was a work of art and he was quite proud of it, but in many situations tranquilizers or containment foam were more efficient. Of course parahumans represented the bulk of the situations where neither worked, and then his halberd was an excellent way to introduce whatever technology he needed to them as rapidly as possible. He had looked into micro-missiles once, but PR had put their foot down and honestly he hadn’t been too excited about having vast quantities of flammable rocket fuel on him when Lung was in town.  
  
“Appearances? You said you were the leader of the Protectorate ENE. What is that? Some sort of team of super friends?”  
  
“A government regulated and funded organization to deal with parahumans and their effects.” When they had started the Protectorate was meant for more than fighting villains, but those aspirations had faded. “Bet has far more parahumans than any other world we’ve discovered, not that we’ve sampled many, and after they started showing up in numbers actions had to be taken, giving us the Protectorate.”  
  
“So closer to super-cops then? Or the super FBI? I guess Robocop was close to the mark then.” Stark was consulting his navigation screen as he drove, weaving in and out of traffic in a way that made Armsmaster wish he was driving. Not that he’d go slower, but it was nice to be behind the wheel and in control. “But enough about that. Pepper might be annoyed but I’m honestly a bit more interested in your halberd than your home office.”  
  
“I’m flattered of course, but I have to say my tastes lie elsewhere.” Stark looked astonished for a second, for some reason no one ever expected him to make jokes, then grinned.  
  
“I won’t say that this would be fast for me, but I’m not going to enter into any new relationships with technologies. My suit’s enough for now.” They left the highway and he could see a control tower in front of them. “But seriously, what tech are you worried about them getting?”  
  
Armsmaster thought back through the various functions he’d packed into his weapon. Nothing too exotic was in there by his world’s standards but here? “The power system is fairly elegant, lithium-air batteries with a fairly high energy density, but compared to your reactor I doubt they measure up. The plasma blade-“  
  
“Like a lightsaber?” Stark had stopped in front of a gate that was opening without any signs of human involvement.  
  
“I did build one of those once, but the cutting edge only worked for several inches without flash boiling the user’s hand with convection. No it’s just a souped up industrial plasma cutter really.” Hard light projections were something he wanted to give another try, but the power requirements were exorbitant.  
  
“So Star Wars was in your universe as well?” That seemed to shake him more than anything else had. “I’d think that there’d be so many divergences- “  
  
“Philosophers have been going crazy about it for years. I’d say don’t worry about it, unless the prequels were good in this universe.”  
  
Stark sat for a second, he had parked next to a hanger and looked deep in thought before he shook his head firmly and got out of the car, grabbing a briefcase from the trunk. “Probably a practical approach. And no, they weren’t.” Armsmaster gave the surrounding area a quick scan before he followed Stark into the hanger. “So I’m half thinking our best bet is DC. My company has- You.”  
  
Stark pulled up short, glaring a tall black man with an eyepatch. Armsmaster liked to think that he was able to look past stereotypes, probably aided by every single ethnic group having their own gang to despise, but a solidly built man in a black leather long coat was practically shouting villain to his well-honed instincts. He stepped next to his erstwhile ally, making sure his footsteps were heavy. Normally he’d do something with his halberd to try to demonstrate his readiness for a conflict, but SHIELD had ruined that option. “Problem, Stark?”  
  
“Well it appears we weren’t quite as discreet as I’d hoped.” Stark had his briefcase in front of him now, almost like he was hiding behind it. “Meet Director Fury.”  
  
The name was familiar, and Armsmaster nearly cursed as he recognized it. He’d read the dossier, although Stark’s ASCII portrait had been a remarkably poor likeness. If the director was present here he must feel he held all the cards. Of course Armsmaster still had a quite a few tricks up his sleeve, even ignoring whatever Stark had in the case.  
  
“I’d hoped to meet under better circumstances than you beating up my men and gluing them to, well everything.” Fury had a relaxed drawl, not at all worried about being in the same room as a man who’d walked through an entire FBI field office. It was just another reason to assume he had something in reserve. “Of course with Stark involved I should be grateful that another set of armored suits didn’t smash up all of Texas. I suppose he also explains why you chose to leave so expeditiously?”  
  
“That would be your subordinates’ actions Director Fury, particularly the theft of my halberd.” His EKG wasn’t showing anyone else in the hanger, and his sonar was working on building a model of the jet inside. Hopefully it would resolve the voids inside rapidly enough to be useful, but the sound proofing insulation would likely prevent getting any valid data in a reasonable timeframe. Fury was armed, and wearing what his software identified as a Type II ballistic vest, but a pistol wasn’t really a credible threat. That implied there were people outside, but the thin metal walls of the hangar were enough to frustrate his armor’s sensors.  
  
“We never touched your halberd.” Fury wasn’t lying, at least according to his detector, but one sentence wasn’t enough to really trust it completely. “Your descriptions of the possible consequences were enough for the FBI to put it in an evidence locker and evacuate the surrounding rooms.”  
  
“Just like you never touched the FBI’s records? Pardon me for some skepticism about the motives of an international Gestapo.” That was unfair based on all he’d seen, but provoking emotions increased his detector’s accuracy remarkably. People could hide most of their voluntary responses but subtler ones were present regardless. “In any case Mr. Stark has volunteered to take me to duly appointed or elected representatives of the United States, and I don’t see the utility of further interactions.”  
  
Fury raised one eyebrow, and for an instant Armsmaster wondered if he ever actually raised the one above his lost eye. “I’ll look into your allegations, but I hope you see the light about SHIELD. We have resources that can’t be matched and the expertise to get you back to your world.”  
  
“Interdimensional travel is something you guys do these days?” Stark was visibly amused by the idea. “Looking for some extra-extraordinary renditions?”  
  
“Something your father was looking at once actually Mr. Stark.” Fury looked between the two of them once more, seemingly weighing something. Armsmaster did a quick check of his remaining munitions just in case. If it came down to a fight he’d engage Fury to give Stark time for-  
  
“Very well gentlemen. Have it your way.” Fury took several long strides to the side before walking towards the door behind them. He stopped just before he reached it. “Our offer stands Armsmaster.” With that he opening the door to a seemingly empty tarmac and left.  
  
Stark left out a sharp exhale. “I didn’t really think they’d be sharp enough to track us. Guess that’s why he’s the spy.” He hefted his briefcase again and started for the jet’s suddenly lowering stairs. “Get the wheels spinning Jarvis.” The engines coughed and started as they reached the entrance and Armsmaster almost grabbed him before the tinker fearlessly bounded up into an unsearched area. He gritted his teeth and followed, only to find an empty cockpit and a cabin with only Stark in it.  
  
“Autonomous flight?”  
  
Stark didn’t look up from the drink he was mixing. “Yep, an expert system, he started as natural language processing and went from there. I call him Jarvis.” He sipped it before giving the bottle a disparaging look. “I’ve got some alleged whisky here, want any?”  
  
“No thanks.” A drink would be nice, but caution was still required. “How’d you train it-him?” Stark’s judging look made him change pronouns.  
  
“My dad was always paranoid, our house was rigged with a security system and he kept all the tapes. When I upgraded I digitized them, and fed them through a text to speech program and pulled out all of interactions by subject.” He took another long sip as they taxied towards the end of the runway. “We had a butler, Edwin Jarvis, who practically raised me. I took all of his interactions and shoved them into a mixture of hidden Markov models and a neural net and what became Jarvis came out.”  
  
“And he figured out piloting from there?” His combat prediction software was based on Markov chains, but he wouldn’t have thought such sophistication would come from them.  
  
“Well this was years ago, and several upgrades and hardware iterations prior. He’s much smarter than he once was.”  
  
“Thank you, sir.” The computer’s voice was a bit of a surprise, along with the simulated emotion. “Now if you could take your seats and buckle in for takeoff?”  
  
“Of course. How long till DC?”  
  
“Approximately three and a half hours. I’ve alerted Miss Potts who has arranged for an appointment with Lt. Colonel Rhodes.”  
  
“Great, thanks Jarvis.” He leaned back in his seat and gave Armsmaster a considering look. “So just out of curiosity how much would it cost me to get some footage of you gluing SHIELD agents to the floor?”  
  
Two taps and a blink started up his projector. “Given their actions I suppose it will cost one flight to Washington.”

Coulson’s expression upon being foamed was much more satisfying in slow motion


	3. Answers

Stark, the man had told him to call him Tony but Armsmaster couldn’t quite bring himself to do it yet, had listened intently about the Protectorate and PRT. He’d asked a few questions, but if there was one good thing about the half mad cape world it was that it fit into society’s expectations fed by decades of comic books. He had debated internally about mentioning the Endbringers, Protectorate policy left the decision to the front-lines, but he ended up describing them. Stark had been excited about Bet, about the multiverse and the glamor of super powered justice. The Endbringers represented the dark side, as Legend said they were the only reason parahumans were tolerated. Unsurprisingly that killed the conversation for a third of the flight.  
  
They were both tinkers though, and sooner or later it was inevitable they’d get to taking about their triumphs.  
  
“Well past the Arc Reactor and Jarvis of course,” the AI didn’t respond, “I think the repulsors are probably my favorite.”  
  
The invention in question was suspended between them with a rather nice rendering hologram. Armsmaster had used them in the past, but in general he preferred a slightly more precise interface. That tradeoff might not exist with Jarvis assisting him. Stark probably got to skip many of the needed steps, like tolerancing and surface finishes. The AI was a massive accomplishment, and it would be a lie to say that he didn’t want one of his own. Maybe when he got back Dragon would be open to collaborating. They’d been working on several analysis programs, based on Jarvis a general AI would be far more useful.  
  
“Stunned by my genius?” Stark had noticed his drifting. “I know reactionless thrusters are pretty cool but you need to have something to top them. Then we can go back and forth in some mad rivalry to constantly one up each other.” Armsmaster had seen reactionless thrusters before, or items that doubled as them, but Stark’s were elegant. Power hungry certainly, but that was worth it given his capabilities.  
  
Stark had challenged him though, something that he’d never been particularly good at backing down from. “Well if we’re doing conservation violations, I’m pretty proud of my inertial shunt.”  
  
“Nice technobabble, schematics or it didn’t happen.” There were several laws against attempting to uplift other universes, folded into the larger law that banned exploration, but technology trades were legal. Thinkers had speculated that factions of the Elite had gotten that through, but there had never been the political will to repeal it. Even if it had been it wouldn’t have stopped Armsmaster from projecting the diagrams onto the table between them.  
  
“In its current form it can increase the inertial mass of an object by a thousand percent, velocity and energy are conserved but momentum is not.”  
  
“So it hits like a freight train then.” Stark was studying both the shunt and the image of his halberd in its flail mode. “It only increases the inertial mass though? It doesn’t work backwards?”  
  
“Not yet.” Two swipes brought up his notes on what he was stubbornly not calling an inertial compensator. “So far I haven’t been able to find a solution for the field equations that doesn’t either explode into tachyons or imply that I’d liberate enough energy to dry the Atlantic.”  
  
“And that would be bad.” Stark had dragged a virtual pen from his CAD system and was scrawling Feynmann diagrams. “Intuitively, a word I usually use to mean obvious for me but not you, I’d expect that the same mechanism you use to reset the flail would let you decrease inertia but-“  
  
“It’s pretty extremely non-linear and asymmetrical.” What was worse is that reducing gravitational mass was so much simpler, even Kid Win had managed it. “I suspect some other tinkers have done it, or at least used it as a power source, but those who start messing around with high energy physics don’t usually leave notes.” He pulled up a picture of the Iola crater. “Or even bodies really.”  
  
“Damn.” Stark stared at the equations for a few moments longer, then pulled up a file directory and started paging through it. “Well on the whole I’m glad I’m not on Bet, which reminds me our Earth needs a name, but I’ll admit to a little jealousy with regards to your physics budgets. I’ve had some success in the area but it would be nice to have a firmer foundation.”  
  
“We don’t really, there are a lot of advances into random subjects but the overall level is decades behind at best.” Stark hadn’t yet found the curse of tinker tech, the constant failures and jury rigged fixes. He might not, having an AI to maintain and help build his equipment could obviate that problem, but it would hit eventually. “I expect your world will have a healthier overall growth pattern, less reliant on unsustainable works.”  
  
“Maybe so, but man! Inertial compensators. Jarvis pull up the rocket project.” The repulsors were replaced by a dart like spaceplane that Stark set slowly spinning with a wave. “This has kind of been a pet project of mine. It’s a bit too much to pay for myself, but I’d like to leave something especially impressive behind and I think space would do it.” No engineer could look at the smooth lines, the delta wings gracefully merging into the fuselage, without falling a little bit in love. “Human survivable accelerations are the big limit, otherwise we could just put everything into railgun shells and loft them that way, but if we got the compensators…” He trailed off, captured by the possibilities. Tinkers had thought big back on Bet too.  
  
“So Lt. Colonel Rhodes.” It wasn’t the most graceful segue, but dwelling on dreams of the past wasn’t an efficient usage of time, no matter how attractive it was. “What is he like?”  
  
“Oh Rhodey? He’s the best.” Stark was fiddling with the spaceplane, he’d pulled up what looked like the electrical subsystems and was adjusting the wires’ gauges. “He was the military liaison with Stark Industries for a few years before he moved onto bigger and better things. He’s got friends in high places though, he’ll get you to whoever should handle interdimensional contact. Maybe the president?”  
  
After the SHIELD fiasco Armsmaster didn’t have especially high hopes, but he’d made his choice. “I’ll settle for an assistant cabinet secretary, but the president would work.”  
  


__

  
Rhodes was nothing like Stark, which was almost a relief. The tinker was a genius and their discussion had been fruitful, the sonic taser suggested a whole line of possibilities and was well worth the adaptive tranquilizer he’d traded for it, but he was exhausting. In contrast Rhodes heard them out, picked up the phone and set up a meeting with the Secretary of State for the next morning.  
  
Of course that left the three of them sitting in a hotel restaurant that Stark had rented eating appetizers. He hadn’t had real food for three grueling days and his armor’s nutrition paste was exhausted. He mostly sat back and let the two of them banter, designs flickering through his mind. The thoughts of what he could do with an arc reactor were intoxicating, enough that he didn’t immediately realize that the conversation had stalled and they were waiting for a response. A frequently practiced gesture and blink command dragged the transcript of the conversation back on screen and showed the last question.  
  
“I’m not certain, I’ve reviewed Professor Haywire’s- “  
  
“Professor Haywire?” Rhodes’s voice was dry. “And people criticize my naming skills.”  
  
“I believe the press gave him the name, he was a little mad in any event.” A sip of his drink gave him a moment to think back to Madison and the consequences of the portals. “He had several methods which let him step between worlds, and a host of ancillary technologies.”  
  
“And you just sat on all of it?” Stark looked almost offended by the idea.  
  
“It was only two years ago that its true potential was understood.” He hadn’t thought of that day in the snow with the Simurgh’s constant scream as monsters emerged from thin air in months, ever since the city was sealed off. The Simurgh wouldn’t have attacked without a reason though, and perhaps keeping them locked on Bet was it. That line of thought led to madness though. “And with the way it was shown few wanted to spend much time on it.”  
  
“But you think you can get it working and get back to your world?’ Rhodes’s question didn’t seem to be fueled by doubt, he must have been used to the outlandish proclamations of tinkers based on his friendship with Stark. “And then what? An embassy?”  
  
“At the very least a phone line. Past that I couldn’t say.” When he got back other people would take care of the details, they’d remember that he got there first though.  
  
Stark and Rhodes shared a look and Rhodes nodded. “Well the Secretary will probably support that, but it’ll be the President’s call.” He leaned back into his chair, swirling his drink idly. “So with that sorted do you have any way to find your halberd?”  
  
With all of the discussion he’d nearly forgotten that he’d lost it, and the annoyance surged back. “Fury claimed it wasn’t him- “  
  
“If he was planning on disappearing you he’d have taken it for sure, but he’d be more cautious I think.”  
  
“Fury doesn’t burn his bridges when he doesn’t have to that’s true.” Rhodes had his phone out and was fiddling with it. “I’d almost say this was something Hammer would pull, but Justin’s in jail and the company got their ears pinned back pretty hard.”  
  
“It would be quick work in any case, and it would almost definitely burn their agent.” Stark grabbed Rhodes’s phone and dialed three numbers before setting it to speakerphone and on the table. “Jarvis, what’s the FBI saying about recent events?”  
  
“Classified sir, and air gapped. The field agents aren’t especially happy about it though.” It was awfully nice to retain access to intelligence, even without his security clearances. Rhodes looked uncomfortable about being a party to it, but more resigned than anything. “Examining the traffic cameras did yield at least one lead. Of the two agents who left the field office carrying something of sufficient size as to be the halberd one has not returned to work since.”  
  
“Well it’s either there still-“  
  
“Or one of them has it.” It was possible that his halberd had been sufficiently hidden, but between wide spectrum radio waves and the infrasonic signals he’d have thought something would have gotten through. Corruption in the FBI was ever present, the potential rewards were just too much to keep everyone loyal. Someone had seen a payday in his carefully deactivated halberd and just walked off with it. Or SHIELD had stolen it, but Heinlein’s razor suggested otherwise. “Where did the agent take it?”  
  
“I couldn’t say, Austin has sufficient gaps in camera coverage that I was unable to track the man in question. However,” Stark’s phone buzzed and he pulled it from his jacket irritably and paged through several pictures the AI must have sent, “SHIELD has resources I do not and the two agents you encountered are on their way to Houston as we speak.” It was a low quality image, but the redhead, the newly short haired redhead, was identifiable through a car windshield.  
  
“It would be awfully hard to get a six-foot spear through security.” Stark was looking at the woman’s picture with some annoyance. “And Houston’s port isn’t quite as tight as others, even ignoring all the companies there who might be the end customer.”  
  
“Roxxon? They purchased the bulk of Hammer.” Stark seemed to consider Rhodes’s suggestion before shaking his head decisively.  
  
“I don’t think they’d have the guts, not after what happened to the last guys who stole my stuff.”  
  
“Well one of them got promoted. And it wasn’t your tech.”  
  
That was met with a dismissive gesture. “Advanced tech, same difference. So we’re going down to H-town tomorrow then?”  
  
“Shouldn’t we just let SHIELD handle it?” Rhodes didn’t seem to have any real hope of his suggestion being followed.  
  
“We’d probably never see it ever again if they did.” Stark left the table, grabbing his briefcase and setting it down in front of him. “No, you and Armsmaster will go see the secretary, I’ll head up to New York to get one of my real suits and we’ll all meet in Houston tomorrow around lunchtime so that we can get some barbecue when we finish.” As he spoke he kicked something on the case and magic happened.  
  
Armsmaster was barely able to trigger his extended sensors for a complete recording as he watched the case expand, grow, until Stark was enveloped in metal, his reactor shining in the dim restaurant. Stark walked to the exit, before stopping to look back at the still shocked tinker. “Still sure your tastes don’t go this way? Because you’re looking awfully hard if they don’t.” Armsmaster didn’t get a chance to reply before Stark was gone, flying off in a long curve bending north.

 


	4. Action

The meeting with the Secretary of State was almost anti-climactic. Armsmaster had spent most of the night using the hotel’s cleaning supplies to ensure he didn’t smell like a man who’d been trapped in a titanium polymer can for four days, and if he’d failed no one was rude enough to mention it. When he got back he’d have to see if McNeil would be interested in purchasing rights to his formula, they were always seeking an edge against their larger pharmaceutical competitors. 

Rhodes had driven with him and given the Secretary the summary of recent events, all of which the Secretary absorbed impassively. Armsmaster had half expected some outrage over SHIELD’s duplicity, but that was apparently standard fare.  Instead he just agreed in principle to diplomatic links when contact was established and that until then Armsmaster would have the rights and privileges as a foreign embassy.  All in all, it was entirely satisfactory. He’d made first contact with a new and friendly government, and even better Stark had contacted him that he’d found a lead on his halberd.  Armsmaster couldn’t think of the last time he’d been looking forward to the future more.

The good mood carried him to the airport where both his thoughts and the car ground to a halt.  Rhodes looked just as surprised as him at the massive cargo jet and the gunmetal monolith resting in the open cargo bay. 

“Any idea what that is?” Rhodes’s question surprised him, surely the officer would know better what his- no of course Stark would keep secrets.  The car’s springs relaxed with a grateful groan as he followed Rhodes out.  Most vehicles weren’t really built for five hundred pound passengers, and if it hadn’t been a rental he’d have felt guilty for ruining the seat. 

Cargo handlers were tightening come-alongs to secure the structure to the ground as they both approached it.  It was rectangular, perhaps two meters tall and entirely featureless. His scans didn’t reveal anything, the shell was thick enough to block all the spectrums he could monitor with just his suit, once more he felt the lack of his halberd.  He ran his gauntlet over it, two of the fingers on his left hand had fingerprint scanners that had high enough resolution photocells to determine surface finishes. There were fine lines running along the faces of the cargo, ones that he suspected were seams. Stark seemed to like unfolding structures, he had a sudden suspicion at what was inside the block.

“Never mind.” Rhodes seemed to have come to a conclusion as well, no doubt aided by the envelope he crumpling in his hands. “Typical Tony.”

“Sirs?” One of the crew had been waiting for them to finish checking out Stark’s mystery box and from the glances at his wrist he was growing impatient.  “We need to be rolling if we want to meet our flight plan. Are you both ready?” Rhodes nodded sharply and the cargo bay was suddenly filled with the whine of motors as the rear door and ramp began to close. “If you’ll buckle yourselves in for takeoff?”

The man didn’t wait for them to comply, instead heading for the cockpit as the two of them figured out the jump seats.  The plastic was apparently significantly over engineered as it didn’t complain beneath his armored weight, even with the acceleration of takeoff. 

Rhodes was back on his feet almost before they stopped climbing, walking to the front of the structure as Armsmaster followed.  Rhodes was brushing his hands over the surface, apparently searching for the seams that he’d identified.  Now that he was looking again there were two roughly hand shaped regions at about shoulder height, he stepped past Rhodes and put his hands against the zones. “No gloves Rhodes.” The man in question didn’t react to a block of steel talking to him, instead taking Armsmaster’s relinquished position.

When the man’s hands hit the side a hatch flipped open and lasers sprayed out, scanning the entire cargo hold before focusing on Rhodes’s body and tracing him thoroughly.  After several seconds the hatch flipped shut and the edifice spoke again. “Valid user ‘Rhodey’ detected. Password?” Rhodes muttered something, the noise of the plane muffling it. “Please speak up ‘Rhodey’.”

Rhodes shook his head before letting out a sigh. “War Machine is a dumb name.”

“Password recognized.” There was a beat after the utterance, then the block began to move.  Rhodes’s hands jerked forward as the plates he was leaning on receded, even as the front of the structure opened in a way that didn’t quite seem physically possible.  Armsmaster set his suit to record as a black and grey carapace grew around Rhodes.  It was bulkier than both of Stark’s suits he’d seen so far, and had more visible weapons, most notably a shoulder mounted chain gun.  He couldn’t help but think it was a little gauche, but even that was subsumed by jealousy.

Stark’s AI let him do so much, skip so many steps, his first priority on going home was to replicate Jarvis in some form.  Even if he didn’t fully succeed having an automated assembler would be worth its weight in gold.  Between that and the arc reactor, he’d gotten a good enough look at it along with Stark’s comments that he was confident he could replicate it, he’d be able to bring his devices to a new height. Kaiser, Lung, they’d be unable to stand up to him, and he’d finally have time to advance.

Rhodes was fully armored up by the time he resolved on his new path. The airman was going through a series of stretches and poses that seemed to be testing flexibility and range of motion.  It was bold to be doing that with the armor on as a dry run, Armsmaster had known more than a few tinkers who screwed up their armor’s articulation and broke bones or dislocated joints.  That wasn’t the sort of thing to mention to a man trying it out though, Stark seemed to have done a good job on the kinematics in any case. He sat back down and pulled up a drafting program as Rhodes kept moving, he’d had so many ideas since he arrived and this was his first real chance to put some of them down. 

* * *

 

“So what are we going into?” They had met Stark as planned in Houston, and both were curious to learn what the tinker had found out about the halberd thieves.

Stark motioned for them to wait as he drank some sort of green sludge, a spinach smoothie if Armsmaster was any judge, before tossing the bottle into the trash and flipping his faceplate down. “Right, so Jarvis got a hit on our FBI man. Between traffic cameras and a little bit of an Orwellian nightmare we’ve got a current location.”

“Who took it?” Rhodes still had his helmet open, either he was more tolerant of the heat or after three hours of system calibration he just wanted fresh air.  “I know what we can do, and he’s an official superhero, but there’s only three of us.  There are plenty of organizations that could crumple us into tin cans.”

“A. No there’s not, and B. A sketchy little holding company with links to, well a lot really.” Stark had a hologram of a complex slowly rotating above his outstretched arm. It looked like a standard industrial facility, large slab-sided buildings, trailer bays, enormous ventilation ducts and a curiously empty parking lot.  “Most of the things they own are pretty anodyne, a lot of patent trolls with a fairly wide biotech base, but one in particular tripped a few flags. IGH.”

Rhodes spoke for both of them. “If you wanted a reaction you might want a different audience.”

Stark seemed almost annoyed he had to explain. “Right, well a different universe is a decent excuse, what’s yours Rhodey? They’re big into bio enhancement but I hadn’t heard about anything questionable.  Of course with black budgets and all I wouldn’t necessarily know even if they were doing something. Still, if their parent company is snatching stolen spears we can probably assume some sort of-“

“General malfeasance sure.” Armsmaster had a feeling the real reason Rhodes kept his visor up was so that Stark would see his eyes rolling. “So how many are we looking at? What’s Jarvis seen there?”

The AI answered himself. “Based on the parking lot approximately twenty-five are present, using the license plates and the registered owner’s social media accounts approximately half seem to have military training of a sort.” AI based tactical analysis was another thing to make sure he had working.  It was the logical next extrapolation to his combat prediction program, even if the system with multiple adversaries might be too chaotic. 

The numbers seemed to assuage Rhodes’s concerns. “We’ll just fly in and- wait can you fly?”

“Not yet.” A combination of anti-grav panels and a derivative of Stark’s repulsors were on his drawing board, but that would have to wait.

“I’ve taken the liberty of renting a vehicle.” Jarvis chimed in helpfully.

“Besides, shock and awe in Houston might not be the best idea. I doubt we’re much ahead of SHIELD as is, they’d certainly notice explosions and gun fire.”

“This is Texas you know.”

“No reasoned arguments Rhodey. Armsmaster and I will drive over, walk in the front door and politely ask for his halberd back.”

“At which point they’ll refuse, and I’ll smash through the ceiling.”

“Sounds like a plan, although I think your obsession with breaking through roofs is a cause for concern.”

It was simple, and given the capacity of Stark’s suits along with his own it seemed likely to work. Stark’s point about SHIELD catching up was another reason to hurry, he didn’t doubt that his halberd would be ‘destroyed in the confusion’ or simply lost if they got their hands on it.

* * *

 

Houston was just as sprawling as Eidolon’s version back on Bet, and the facility they were looking for was on the southeast side.  Refineries and factories flew past them as they rolled down the highway, Stark taking great joy in the surprised looks of motorists as they saw their armored forms. Rhodes had vanished nearly instantly as he ascended, if things came to blows hopefully his presence would be a surprise. It didn’t take long before they left the highway and pulled into the factories parking lot. 

The gravel crunched beneath their feet as they walked, and under the hot sun he could almost imagine he was in a western. Stark’s decision to play the theme song of The Good the Bad and the Ugly over his external speakers might have contributed, but Armsmaster had elected to ignore it. The door to the lobby was locked, but Stark pulled it open with a sudden crunch of metal.

“Can I help you?” The man sitting at the desk looked supremely unimpressed by their entrance.

“Yeah, my buddy here lost a halberd and you guys have it.” Stark took two long steps to loom over the man, grabbed him by the shirt and lifted. “It would be really, really cool if you could just give it back.”

The receptionist seemed to give the request all due consideration as he hung by his shirt than shook his head. “Nah.” Stark glanced over his shoulder, as if to share his incredulity, and the man _moved_.

He got his hands on Stark’s shoulders even as he jerked up to get his legs against the wall before shoving Stark hard enough to bounce him off the far wall. With his suit on it shouldn’t have hurt him, but Armsmaster was too busy dealing with the surprise brute in his face to check for sure.

If he had to judge he’d say the man hadn’t had his strength for long, he was fighting like a regular human.  Simple strength was better suited to grappling, otherwise the brute would just fling themselves around and waste energy.  With that caveat he knew what he was doing, his flurry of punches showed that.  It didn’t matter. Armsmaster had been fighting parahumans for years, and simple brutes, like the Brute 3 he was fighting, weren’t a real challenge.  He stepped into the man’s range, blocked a punch with his armor’s strength and hit him with his scaling taser.  The brute dropped.

“Bravo.” Metallic clanging, made him turn to see an unscathed Stark clapping, or trying to.  “I guess IGH found something then. Rhodey will be a little excited to use his plan.”

Stark was being entirely too casual about the whole thing, Armsmaster toggled his radio to contact their air support. “Rhodes, wait until they know we’re here to engage, once we have their attention I’ll signal and you’ll be able to take them in the rear.”

“Hear that Rhodey? It’s going to be a good day for you, first you get to drop through the ceiling and then-“

“Roger that Armsmaster. Awaiting your call.”

Armsmaster sent a sonar pulse through the walls as Stark moved over the fallen brute towards the door into the main facility.  He didn’t see any life signs, his ranged EKG was similarly blank, and he followed Stark through the door. 

They found an empty cubical farm, with the only light coming from the windows with their blinds drawn.  A heavy door, presumably to the factory, was visible on the far side as they made their way through the maze of chest high dividers.  Theoretically between his sonar and the EKG he should be able to detect anyone hiding, but powers were weird. He toggled on his combat prediction program and disabled the limiters on his actuator’s strength. Full combat mode rapidly drained his batteries, but the enhancements would be needed if he were to fight more brutes, especially while unarmed and low on munitions.

Stark came to a halt before they left the cube farm. “Rhodey, we’re about to leave the offices, get ready.” He didn’t even bother to open the door, smashing through the sheetrock next to it. The explosion that followed showed that was an excellent choice.  Armsmaster made his own hole, staying well away from the door that had just absorbed a claymore. Stark was already in combat, his repulsors screaming as he blasted the brutes clambering through the lab towards him. They weren’t a match individually, but if enough of them got their hands on their suits they’d be in trouble. 

Their enemies seemed to have the thought at the same time he did, several leaping for Stark even as a smaller group finally noticed Armsmaster.  His last adaptive tranquilizer took out the leader, but the others leapt over his fallen body.  He ducked the first’s rough haymaker, his armor gave him the speed needed, and slammed his gauntlet into the man’s stomach where his taser completely failed to do anything.  The brief surprise gave the brute enough time to land a blow, sending him skidding backwards. 

Playtime was over it seemed. “Guess we’re doing this the hard way.” Unprofessionally they had given him time to recover, and as he’d expected they’d even waited for his one liner.  That was all his combat predictor needed to model their increased brute strength and provide counters.  This time he slipped the punch, caught the man’s arm, and with a satisfying crunch hyperextended his outstretched elbow.  Screams of comrades had a noted morale draining effect, and generally the pain was sufficient to keep the victim out of subsequent combat while not risking a fatality.  He tossed the brute over a table covered in things that looked expensive and shattered nicely as his computer aided reflexes made him lean. 

His inexplicable dodge left the assailant on his back foot, an elbow to the solar plexus and a stomp to the knee left him on his back.  Stark was doing well, and at some point Rhodey had dropped in.  Their enemies were running and seeking ranged weapons, the only ones left trying to get in close were his two.  The rapid fall of their allies had made them cautious, but one had picked up a claw hammer as the other scrabbled in a case for something.  He went for the hammer man first, with their demonstrated strength a good hammer could penetrate his armor, and let him take a few swings to get his measure.  The man was staying back, he clearly didn’t want to grapple, and at the moment Armsmaster didn’t have anything to use at range.  Until he did. 

His halberd materialized in his hand out of an array of gleaming blue lines, the hammer man barely had time to gawk before he shifted it to flail mode and flicked it into his chest.  The impact launched him backwards, past the other man who was somewhat comically looking between the opened case at his feet and Armsmaster’s halberd.  He barely even tried to resist as the returning flail took his legs out and the tranquilizer in the shaft knocked him out. 

Hammer man was on his feet, and he was the last one standing, Stark and Rhodes had chased their opponents out of sight and the gunfire and repulsors blasts had stopped. The man was clearly on the edge, his friends had been taken out and he was exhibiting several biological markers of panic. Of course panic often looked the same as adrenaline responses, paling, pupil dilation, shaking, actually everyone he’d fought had been like that.  Combat did cause that sort of response, but they were trained men, it shouldn’t have been that obvious.  A mystery that would have to wait. 

The last man charged, flinging the hammer forward in an attempt at a distraction.  Armsmaster let his suit handle the response, relaxing his arm as his ignited plasma blade was moved by the servos to slice the hammer out of the air.  He simply speared the last criminal with the butt of his shaft, and the same tranquilizer knocked him out.

Well mission accomplished.  He had his halberd back, whoever these people were would be punished for their actions, and he wouldn’t need to write an after action report. Independent heroing had never seemed so attractive.  “Stark, Rhodes, I’m all finished up in here and I’ve retrieved our objective.”

“Well come on out then, we’ve got reservations for lunch.”

A new voice intruded on their comms, a woman’s. “Yeah, you’re probably going to miss those.” His suit alerted him to motion behind him, he spun to see several suited men and a short haired redhead who was speaking into her radio as she looked at him. “We’ve got a few questions for all of you.” 


	5. After

“Technically, I don’t need to answer your questions.” In another life Armsmaster could have been a lawyer. Sifting through documents, searching for the proper argument that would utterly resolve a situation in his favor, he had thought he could be good at it. A greater aptitude for hard sciences and a day shadowing a friend of his father’s as he deposed witnesses had convinced him otherwise. Despite that it was occasionally fun to take shelter behind the law as he’d imagined in his childhood. The lead agent, the redhead he’d foamed, didn’t seem to share his amusement.  
  
“You might be an accredited diplomat, but Stark isn’t. As for Rhodes,” she trailed off meaningfully. “If you cooperate they’ll have it easy.”  
  
Stark had been fairly cavalier about the law in their brief acquaintance, but Fury had partially cowed him. Even if the law was on their side Armsmaster had worked with Director Piggot’s brand of law enforcement enough to know that that was only the first step. Billionaires could buy good lawyers though. He masked his hesitation by pushing past a lab table to sedate the brute who’s arm he’d shattered.   
  
“I’m not entirely certain about anyone’s legal status here.” He was transmitting to both of his allies as he spoke, hopefully one of them would have a useful idea. The agent penetrating their communications network stung, he’d implemented a protocol Stark had suggested and thought it was sufficient. SHIELD easily breaking it spoke to either immense codebreaking power or treachery. Stark had probably drawn the same conclusion, but setting up new encrypted communications between Alice and Bob while Carol was looking increasingly angry with her squad of agents behind her was nearly impossible. “However- “  
  
Stark’s suit crashed to the floor, followed by dust and debris from the hole he’d smashed in the ceiling. Rhodes dropped through the same opening, somehow managing to convey irritation as he descended gracefully. “I can see why you like doing that Rhodey, it’s a rush. Who knows what’s beneath the roof?” The tinker straightened up and moved to Armsmaster’s side as he bantered. “Support frames, chemical lines, electrical mains, all of those would be pretty exciting and you don’t know until you’re halfway through.”  
  
“I’ve never fallen through a roof in the entire time you’ve known me.” Rhodes had apparently given up on private communications, speakers on his armor transmitting his voice instead. Of course given that his helmet concealed his entire face it was entirely possible that he and Stark had an alternate channel that was free from interference. “We in fact met shortly after you fell off a roof. I think you’re overcompensating here.” His thrusters cut off as he landed next to Stark. The agents looked slightly relieved, they didn’t have noise canceling technology and the repulsors’ scream met the medical definition of deafening.   
  
“We’ll be discussing this later, but in the meantime,” Stark took a step forward and his faceplate slid up, “hello Miss Rushman. HR is still looking for you to deliver your severance package. If you want we can add the name of a good hairdresser to it, although that’s not what we mean by severance strictly speaking.”  
  
“And you wonder why we didn’t want your help.” She turned to Armsmaster, her eyes tracing him in a way that reminded him of Alexandria. “This is your halberd? You were able to locate it?”  
  
“The systems on board allow me to track my equipment globally.” All the best lies had an element of truth in them, and hopefully that would make SHIELD assume he’d be able to find all of his technology. “By the way, how did you like the containment foam?” When people were annoyed they were less likely to be logical, his jibe was both to further cement his lie and for his own satisfaction. “I’m somewhat impressed you were even able to get out of it.”  
  
She raised a single eyebrow, a single asymmetric eyebrow, and then deliberately turned her head back to Stark who started talking again before she could say anything. “You know I’ve been kind of wondering about the initial question my good friend Halbeard-“  
  
“Derivative.”  
  
“I’ll get something, but basically to answer my own question SHIELD has no authority over any of us.” His face plate slammed shut. “Does your armor have somewhere I can lift it?”  
  
He answered before he could think whether or not it was wise, he hadn’t recovered from his first multi-dimensional nickname yet. “Top of the spinal plate.” He’d seen too many tinkers die because there wasn’t an easy way to haul them out of danger, a practiced hardcoded gesture deployed a recessed D-ring.  
  
“Well then we’re out.” Stark moved quickly, he grabbed the lift point and they were aloft, leaving the annoyed Miss Rushman behind.

* * *

  
“That could have gone worse.” Rhodes had caught up to them shortly after they’d left the building, it turned out carrying a few hundred pounds of armor didn’t improve Stark’s aerodynamics. They’d set down at a facility of Stark’s and removed their armor. With some hesitation Colin followed, undoing the latches that kept his suit together.  
  
“Well you’re not famous here.” It wasn’t the first thing Colin had expected when his visor came off, but it would be a lie to say that he hadn’t searched for his inter-universal counterpart. His maternal grandmother, or a woman with the same name and birth town, had existed, but no one else. Considering he’d searched for two hundred other people to conceal his interest in his family the waste of time should have annoyed him, but it was nice to know.  
  
“Colin Wallis, I’m less common than Star Wars it would seem.” He shook hands with the two men, they also seemed to think that revealing his identity made new introductions necessary. His scalp was itching, he felt like his helmet had molded grooves into his cranium and his beard was looking far bushier than normal. “Could I borrow some clothes, and a razor?”  
  
Both Stark and Rhodes were shorter than him, but after days crammed into a bodysuit he’d settle for a t-shirt and basketball shorts, his image be damned. Some of his armor’s mechanical components were also complaining after their hard use. Even before he’d made it to this world he’d battled Faultline’s crew and his normal maintenance schedule was well past due. If he spent too much longer inside of it things would start failing, that was never fun.  
  
“The bathroom is through there,” Stark vaguely gestured as he picked up the halberd, after all the scans he’d taken of the tinker’s work letting him play with the weapon only seemed fair. “We’ll round up something for you to wear, but we do have lunch so, no- Jarvis push back our reservation, or see if they’ll do takeout. I have questions.”

* * *

  
Colin stepped out of the shower feeling like a new man. He hadn’t realized how grimy he was until the water running down the drain changed color and then only slowly returned back to clear. He’d never been one for decadence, he’d gone through the groupie stage extremely rapidly after an embarrassing scare, but the towels billionaires used were almost enough to make him reconsider that stance. As he trimmed his beard back to its normal state he let his mind wander down new paths of tinkering, cloth that was simultaneously fluffy insulating and fast drying. Dragon was Canadian, if anyone knew about warm fabrics it would be her. Maybe giving her some tinker-tech blanket would make her more inclined to help with his AI project? It was something he’d have to think about if he had time after he got back.  
  
The door to the bathroom had opened and closed while he was showering, he found a complete outfit that fit tolerably well just inside, dressed and left to find an empty room. Before he could panic about the loss of his armor a voice, Jarvis, was at his ear.  
  
“Mr. Stark and Lt. Colonel Rhodes have proceeded to the workshop and have invited you to join them.” One of the overhead lights he’d ignored as ordinary fluorescents was suddenly replaced by an arrow. “If you’ll follow the markers?”  
  
“Thanks.” It felt a little odd talking to a computer, but politeness should only be discarded when more pressing requirements dictated. His definition of pressing might be broader than most people, but that was their problem. “Are there any rules for the workshop I should be aware of?” Some tinkers had annoying quirks about permissible behavior, it was generally easier to just deal with them in advance rather than find out the hard way.  
  
“Mr. Stark doesn’t enjoy those who turn his music down, past that nothing springs to mind.”  
  
“Alright then.” The music was just becoming audible as he walked, hopefully he was close or it would be deafening. He’d heard worse in his early career, and if nothing else he remembered how to build the cone of silence that had been his first project working with Hero. Insulation might work better in nearly every case, but back then he’d had more time to build things that were simply cool. An optical scanning sonic nullifier didn’t really have any uses, even if he’d eventually minimized it enough to selectively mute a target. It would have been nice if Hero was here, he’d have gotten along with Stark, and more relevantly he’d been one of the few to toy with dimensional physics before Haywire.  
  
Colin reached the door just as he started trying to remember all he could about the Professor’s work. It slid open on silent hinges and recognizable music flooded forth. It was odd and somewhat irritating that Whitesnake crossed dimensions and he hadn’t. It was probably for the best, but someone seriously needed to do a study on popular culture across universes. He was beginning to suspect that something or someone was behind all the coincidences.  
  
“We were starting to think you drowned.” Stark was staring at a hologram, it looked like he was playing with the inertial shunt design. “So this increases the impact of the Higgs field on electrons? That’s weird as hell and also vaguely disturbing.”  
  
“That’s tinker tech for you.” To his relief his armor and weapons were laid out on a table, it seemed like Stark wanted to be able to ask questions as he studied them. “Do you have power supplies I can use?”  
  
“Do I have power sources Rhodey? Do I?” A drawer across the room hissed open holding several blocky bench top power supplies and oscilloscopes. “Looking to top up the batteries?”  
  
“And a few diagnostics.” It would be nice to get back to fully functional, and using the appropriate voltage would speed up his progress dramatically. “Where do you keep your- “another drawer slid from the table his suit was on, revealing a complete set of hand tools. “That’ll do.”  
  
“Before you nerds get your whole science thing on”- Rhodes had been checking his phone but now he was pulling something up on the holographic interface, “we should probably discuss what we’re doing about SHIELD.”  
  
Stark didn’t seem to agree. “Blowing them off seemed like the best possible choice, and I’m proud of myself for having the courage to do so.”  
  
“Does Pepper know yet?”  
  
That got a response, for the first time Stark looked away from his project. “No and she doesn’t need to,” the door to the lab opened again and the tinker blanched, “yet. Not yet.”  
  
“Hello Rhodey.” A tall woman with red hair, something was clearly off with the genetics here based on the samples so far, strode into the workshop determinedly with one hand outstretched. “You must be Armsmaster.”  
  
“Colin Wallis in private.” It was a little awkward to shake her hand, he’d have preferred to keep his civilian identity limited to as few people as possible but exceptions had to be made.  
  
“Colin, this is Virginia Potts, CEO of Stark Industries and probably the love of my life.” Tony had an expression he recognized as identical to Assault’s when Battery was annoyed as he rushed over with belated introductions. “Pepper, this is Colin, a real live interdimensional super hero.”  
  
“Charmed.” Her smile vanished as she looked back to Stark. “Next time you’re going to tweak SHIELD’s nose give me at least half an hour’s heads up.”  
  
“Of course, but this was important.”  
  
“If you say so.” Her tone took the sting out of her words as the two embraced. “You can tell me all about it later, but some of us have actual jobs. Nice to meet you Colin, Rhodey, it’s always a pleasure.” With that she swept off as rapidly as she’d arrived, a cloud of aides following her as she left the lab. Stark watched her go, his eyes staying locked even after she vanished from sight before he seemed to shake himself.  
  
“Right, science. Want any help with your armor? An extra pair of hands is always useful, as long as they’re mine, but even Rhodey was once an engineer.”  
  
Part of him fed by long habit wanted to keep his secrets, but he needed Stark’s help. Besides there was nothing he wanted quite as much as to get his hands on Stark’s armor and turnabout was fair play. “Sure, the first thing is to ensure the actuators’ function.” As the three of them, well really he and Stark, descended into a tinker haze worries about punching back into Earth-Bet receded. If nothing else that was worth it.


	6. Return

Stark was gone, he’d taken the girl.  All around him was the scattered debris caused by Lung’s entrance and the humming machines that someone, Dragon, had erected.  Dragon’s suit was twitching, he could recognize the control algorithms that denoted a full system scan, it had been partially inspired by Aegis’s power-

A loud chime on his HUD indicated that the power cell earmarked for his timestop was about to be exhausted. Colin shifted his grip on the halberd, his fingers playing over it in a chord he’d never hoped to use, and then leapt back with a repulsors aided jump as the mechanism holding Lung fixed in time separated from the shaft an remained fixed to the enemy cape. 

Like Tony- Iron Man- he’d fallen into bad habits, he wasn’t carrying anything that could put the head of the ABB down in one shot.  However he was in a tinker’s lair, and there was a saying about that.

The timestop cut out a bare instant before the powercell drained, leaving just enough power to be worth detonating directly in contact with Lung’s scaled flesh.  A crater in his torso was added to the horrific injuries of dismemberment, but the cape, more beast than man, just roared. If there were words in his scream his altered throat couldn’t produce them. The dragon’s tail curled beneath him and flung him forward, striking towards Armsmaster even as he was engulfed in flames.

He dodged it of course, he could have even without his upgrades.  Lung’s methods of fighting were simple, but his power gave him that luxury.  Without limbs to give him direction, a state that wouldn’t last long, he could only launch himself in straight lines.  It was too significant a weakness to let pass. 

The next lunge Colin stayed close for, rolling through the fire before striking twice quickly with his halberd.  The super hardened titanium sheared off the stubs of limbs that had managed to regrow, and the repulsors aided swings didn’t even slow as they passed straight through the bone and iron scaled flesh. 

There was a new note of pain in Lung’s roar, more of a scream as he thrashed towards him, pushing with his only two remaining appendages.  Colin leapt him, hurdling over the rolling brute in a move he wouldn’t have dared to try in his old armor.   He had space now, enough to use a bit more of his arsenal. 

“Disengage brute safeties on current target!” The verbal command was somewhat inefficient, but it let the same gestures be used to cause different effects by opponent which could save time in larger fights.  Something to consider revising. In any case he could feel the whine as supercapacitors surged to higher voltages. 

The micro railguns hidden in his pauldron erupted, flinging shards of metal that ripped through an inertial shunt before spraying through Lung’s armor.  The field’s effect only persisted for a microsecond after the matter left it, but it gave him something like a mix between a sandblaster and a particle accelerator as supermassive grains spewed forth in a gleaming stream. 

Wherever it touched Lung a fine red mist erupted, but it didn’t penetrate deeply enough and his magazine ran dry before he could make it up with persistence.  It had served its primary purpose though, keeping the criminal enraged and reeling while his other weapon charged. 

It had been Tony’s brainchild, a fact responsible for the targeting system of three lasers that were in the visible spectrum.  The blazing triangle cut through the smoky air to blazon itself on Lung’s flensed flesh, before an image recognition system reported a positive lock.  A stronger laser, tuned to the absorption frequency of nitrogen stripped the electrons from the molecules along the path, providing a perfect conduit for the sudden discharge of electricity.

The thunder was loud enough to nearly daze him through his armor, its effect on Lung was even more dramatic.  Normally the cape’s iron scales would have channeled the electricity around him, safely, or safely enough, grounding him.  The bloody churned flesh his sandblaster left had no such defense.  The current had flashed through him, making every muscle in his body contract spasmodically.

For the currently asymmetric dragon that flung him to his side, rolling his hindquarters directly into the transit zone he and Iron Man had arrived through. 

“Cut it Jarvis!” Stark’s AI didn’t argue, even before his shout finished the black sphere vanished and with it all of Lung’s body that had been inside it. 

The massive trauma did what nothing else had managed, silencing the cape as his steaming blood flooded the warehouse. 

“Holy Shit Colin!”

Stark arrived through a new hole in the ceiling and a shower of debris just in time to see Lung’s motions finally stop.  Well his torso’s motions, his tail was still twitching much like bisected snakes did. Armsmaster didn’t bother to reply immediately, at this point if the savaged and defeated cape was to survive he needed some luck. 

Lung was pyrokinetic, there’d never been the chance to fully study him but it was likely that the Manton effect would protect him from burns. It was possible that he did suffer burns but his regeneration canceled them out, however it meant that he couldn’t try to cauterize the massive wound to try to prevent him from finishing bleeding out.  In all probability Lung was already dead from the complete lack of blood pressure, but Armsmaster had seen a lot of improbable things.

At what he judged the opportune moment he tossed a containment foam grenade at the shrinking cape.  In this instance the inferiority of the version he and Tony had made worked to their advantage.  Dragon’s foam was air permeable, it allowed troopers to be incredibly liberal with their sprayers as there was no risk of suffocation.  That same property meant that Lung would continue to bleed through it, as opposed to their mixture of rapidly setting foam that would seize directly onto the cut flesh and seal it tight.

A subroutine that hadn’t been used in months was his final act before turning to Tony, calling a high priority alert into the hospital, police, and PRT to inform them of a seriously wounded villainous cape. 

“He would only get stronger, something drastic had to be done.”

“Well sure, no argument there, but shunting half his body into my lab?” The other tinker landed heavily, his words not masking his shock. “Dummy is already bad enough at cleaning, I don’t want to see what happens with gallons of dragon blood spread everywhere.”

The barely concealed shock was normal. Armsmaster knew that Stark had killed before, but there was a difference between engaging faceless enemies at range with high powered weapons and staring at the barely living remains of an enemy gushing blood.  He’d get over it, or he wouldn’t.

“Armsmaster?” The new voice reminded him that they had an audience.  Dragon’s suit was rising to its feet, its self-repair and diagnostics having finally completed.  “Is that you?”

He nodded, and then sent the request for an open channel using codes that would prove his identity better than his face.  “I’m back, Dragon. I’m back.” That fact struck with a strange intensity, as Colin realized that he’d done it, he’d gotten home.

Naturally Stark was the one who ended the moment. “And I’m Tony Stark, aka Iron Man.” His faceplate had flipped up as he looked around, something that prompted a double take from the Canadian. “Are you Dragon? If so I’ve heard a lot about you.”

“That’s me, it’s a pleasure to meet you, especially if you were involved in bringing back Armsmaster.” Her suit managed to do something between a bow and curtsey, and Colin was momentarily distracted by wondering how she had time to program that motion. 

“Iron Man,” he ignored Tony’s look, “is a tinker native to ‘Earth-Gimel’, or as I’m forced to refer to it for a year and two hundred and twenty-three more days ‘Earth-Awesome.’” The bet had been a mistake, but Colin had never been particularly good at resisting competition.  “His help was crucial in returning here.”

“Speaking of, I recognize the utility of closing the portal, but we’re going to have to get moving if we want to get to the alternate crossing point in time for the check in. Rhodes will have literal kittens if we miss that after sending most of a dragon through.”

“We won’t have any difficulty in arranging for the codes to be sent through, or even you if you want to return.  Round Rock is well within range of PRT transports.” They’d planned for the possibility of the portal being in an unsuitable location, and failing Armsmaster’s exit point his arrival location was the next logical choice. 

“Let’s get that sorted before anything else. What was it you mentioned when we first met? Interdimensional war?” Tony’s voice was back to its normal insouciance, although Colin couldn’t tell if he was better or just masking it.

“That’s something we all would like to avoid.” Dragon’s tone was almost normal again as well, but Colin had known her long enough to hear the happiness in it.  It was almost as nice again to hear that as just her modulated voice. “I’ve alerted the PRT, and additional forces as well as ambulances,” sirens were audible now, cutting through the quiet night, “are inbound.”

The first of the mentioned reinforcements arrived silently after dropping through Tony’s hole in the ceiling, Assault’s power at work.  Battery followed more heavily a moment later, her suit’s circuitry gleaming. 

“Boss?”

He gave a curt nod to the question. “Indeed, as you should be aware this is a first contact situation. Iron Man is to be treated with every courtesy and certain efforts must be undertaken prior to my submittal to master stranger protocols.  I’ve transmitted-“

The sudden hug took him by surprise, Ethan had surged forward as he spoke. “Enough of that, we missed you! Your funeral was awesome though, Chevalier had so many stories.”

Battery shoved her husband aside before copying him.  “It’s good to have you back.”

Armsmaster was glad for his newly full face helm, it concealed his mounting embarrassment.  “I can assure you all that I’m glad to be here. However, there are things that need to be done promptly.” Just then the first paramedics burst onto the scene, followed shortly by elements of the Wards and he resigned himself to further delays.


	7. Acclimating

The Rig had a certain smell that he’d missed. Colin wasn’t sure what it was, no doubt some plastic outgassing in the filters, but for him it was home. He wasn’t in his room of course, nor his lab. Piggot had rapidly agreed to get Iron Man to the Round Rock portal site, quickly enough that he suspected that orders had come down from above, but he had gone without him. Instead he was in quarantine, along with Assault and Battery.  
  
“So what do you think the odds are that you’re carrying some sort of interdimensional Andromeda Strain?”  
  
“Slim, if such a pathogen existed it’s improbable I’d be uniquely suited to be a carrier. I’d likely already be dead.”  
  
Silence greeted him and he looked up from his laptop to see Battery’s somewhat ashen expression.  
  
Her husband performed his usual role and carried the conversation. “You know, we really did think you were dead. This-“Assault visibly struggled for words, “whole alternate universe thing, we’re not in a movie, no one else gets to miraculously come back from death.”  
  
Armsmaster saved his work, the forms to get his new technology approved were somewhat terrifying in their length, and then closed his computer. His friends deserved this conversation, even if he’d rather avoid it indefinitely.  
  
“If you’re hoping for an excuse to cut people’s thumbs off I’m not going to be it.” Or he could deflect with humor, Stark seemed to manage it easily.  
  
“What?” It had been a partial success, Battery didn’t look quite as bad, sadness shifting to confusion. “That wasn’t in the book or the movie.”  
  
“You know, at the end when they need to get the Keane’s badge to turn off the self-destruct?” The whole time travel plot hadn’t made much sense, but Colin had enjoyed the thriller. His audience still seemed lost. “Since the bacteria feeds on radiation? It was a pretty big plot point.”  
  
“Colin when did you watch this?” Battery now seemed vaguely accusing.  
  
“Last month, it was a rerun and..” Well that explained some of their confusion. “I remembered the name though, I thought it was another commonality.”  
  
Battery raised an eyebrow and was definitely being judgmental now. “You know, I had always imagined you as someone who read the book instead of watching the movie. It’s sort of nice you’re back so that we can correct our little misconceptions.”  
  
“You’re welcome.” One conversational minefield cleared, hopefully no more to go. “So just to prevent my own misconceptions what’s happened in my absence? How’s the city?”  
  
The two shared a glance before Assault answered. “Unsteady. When you vanished a lot of power came in to get Faultline. The Empire suffered the most, Lung stayed low, and we’ve honestly been waiting for him to make his move.”  
  
“What’s Kaiser done in response?” The man hadn’t gotten this far by being passive, he wouldn’t let a reversal go unanswered.  
  
“He’s got Purity back in the fold, she’s directed again from her haphazard strikes.”  
  
“There’s also some new capes he’s got, probably from the Gesselschaft, but no one that matches Hookwolf or Krieg.”  
  
“Has Lung recruited anyone else?” In contrast the ABB’s leader had always been oddly passive, but you didn’t rise to the top and stay there by being stupid. He’d have to recognize his chance, but if he hadn’t he’d doomed himself. The cape was in the Rig’s medical cell and heavily sedated. He’d somehow survived his injuries, but his brain activity was minimal. Oni Lee was an effective cape, but Colin was sure that the Protectorate could handle him by himself.  
  
Assault stood from the couch, headed to the fridge and answered as he opened a water bottle. “There’s rumors he has a tinker, there have been some robberies that don’t fit the usual pattern but nothing definite.”  
  
“So no idea on the specialty?”  
  
“None at all. With any luck, the cape will just move on and we’ll never know if they exist.” From Battery’s tone she didn’t think that was especially likely.  
  
“I’m hoping for weather control, the winter has been nasty and I’ll happily trade some lightning bolts for sunny days.”  
  
That was a good point, Colin couldn’t bring himself to regret missing most of the slush and sleet season. New York had been somewhat gross, but it had never really reached the misery of a New England snow storm.  
  
“If Hannah does end up keeping my old job I’d be happy to go somewhere a bit warmer, or at least drier.” He had worked so hard to reach his position, but operating without oversight had been thrilling. Maybe there was some sort of role he could take as a traveling troubleshooter, or perhaps he could be seconded to the-  
  
The rig lurched. None of the heroes fell, Assault even caught his water bottle, but they were on their feet instantly, just in time for a second stagger as the alarms began blaring.  
  
“Console this is Assault, what’s our status!” Whatever he heard wasn’t good as he swore. “Be advised that I’m taking us out of quarantine on my own authority, Battery and I will move to assist.”  
  
He scooped up his mask, tossed Battery her helmet, and the two of them were gone. Lacking anything better to do Colin followed.  
  
The scent of home was marred by smoke and something acrid that seemed to twist in his lungs, a feeling he ignored as he sprinted for his lab. He’d like his new armor, but it needed too long to put on without the accompanying assembler. His new halberd though, that would work.  
  
Armsmaster skidded to a halt outside his door and punched in his code, only for nothing to happen. He tried again, he was sure he’d been correct, but human error was inescapable before he realized what had happened. His codes had been deactivated, they’d thought he was dead.  
  
For a moment he felt utterly useless, a tinker without tools was nothing but a liability and part of him knew he should seek shelter. He ignored it.  
  
“Recall Protocol Eight Five Nine!” His shout only added to the din, and he almost reconsidered leaving before the scream of repulsors filled the air.  
  
His halberd punched through the solid steel door, the hardlight blade could cut far harder, before the weapon spun in the air to hang at his side. He hadn’t particularly enjoyed having to recover it the first time, and he’d gone somewhat overboard in ensuring that he wouldn’t have to again.  
  
The repulsors cut off as he grabbed it, and he felt the lack of the neural lace he was integrating into his helmet as he had to enter a chord command to reignite the blade. With his armor’s strength he could cut without engaging the hard light, but without it he could spend all night without carving through a single inch of metal.  
  
He rushed through the hole in the door into his lab, the edges were still molten, and dropped the halberd on his workbench.  
  
His efforts from months before seemed quaint. The arc reactor and the other technologies he and Tony had revolutionized were worlds apart from what he’d made before. The things in his lab were like the finest Austrian watches, beautifully designed and made, but utterly surpassed by the march of time.  
  
They still functioned though. He’d been working on a new heavier set of armor that was meant to be for specific engagements only, it could run for half an hour before being a steel and composite cage, but for the current emergency it would do. It was entirely obsolete, but as he stepped into its shell he couldn’t help but feel encouraged.  
  
The whine of capacitors filled the air as his HUD flashed into existence. It was stripped down, and given his presumed status many fields that would accept tactical data were blank, but as he seized his halberd and a bandolier of containment foam grenades he felt like a hero again.  
  
The armor’s sensors indicated gunfire and explosions on the upper floors, he missed flying as he sprinted heavily towards the stairs. He took the steps half a dozen at a time, bounding upwards as the noise level increased. He wanted to be on the tactical net, but he’d settle for finding a trooper who could direct him to where he’d do the most good.  
  
The door to the next landing bursting open made him think he’d succeeded until the trooper’s body fell across the landing.  
  
Oni Lee appeared, silent behind his demonic mask, reflexes that his absence hadn’t dulled hurled him forward as he blindly stabbed behind him.  
  
Lee had apparently been just as surprised as there wasn’t a clone behind him to be eviscerated. The one on the landing scrabbled for something before Armsmaster was on him and slashing. He dissolved into ashes and Armsmaster let the momentum of his swing carry him around to see the cape rushing down the stairs, he was running.  
  
Armsmaster jumped, the deck plates of the floor groaning beneath his feet as he chased the teleporter. Normally it would be an exercise in futility, but so many powers were limited by line of sight that the stairs had been designed so that only one flight was visible at a time.  
  
Even so he couldn’t win the race, and he was at least five seconds behind when Oni Lee left on the hospital level. He definitely knew too much about the interior layout, especially as a pile of ash showed the way to the medical cell.  
  
Stealth wasn’t an option as his strides hammered the ground, something that almost hurt him as a small cylinder arced towards him.  
  
A practiced swing with his halberd batted it back around the corner- a sudden actinic flash was glaring even as a reflection from the walls, and he rounded the turn to see a coruscating ball of lightning hanging in midair.  
  
Bolts flickered from it, leaving jagged Lichtenberg figures where they struck. He had no idea how it worked, but grounding it seemed sensible. Two slashes left him with a six-foot strip of decking, he picked it up, judged the angle, and flung it through the ball which explosively discharged through the metal.  
  
Armsmaster charged past the smoking metal, he’d already lost too much time, and resisted the urge to swear as he saw the cell opened. He could hear footsteps, and he chased them.  
  
Two Oni Lees were carrying the ruined body of Lung. The gang leader was missing his legs, something the slighter villain was probably grateful for, and the two each had an arm as they ran in eerie synchrony.  
  
One glanced back and tossed something that Armsmater reflexively hit with a repulsor blast from his halberd, the device was either a dud or the beam broke it as nothing happened. Lee looked back again and suddenly he was a yard from Armsmaster and lunging with a knife in his hand.  
  
He was too close for his pole-arm, but with the armor his left hand was strong enough to shatter Lee’s arm as he punched into the villains ribcage with a crunch. He launched the clone into the wall with a sound like breaking sticks, and didn’t break stride as he kept running after the now three Lees. One dissolved into ash and Arsmaster cursed for not tracking which one was the last clone. He’d put all his ranged weapons in his armor, and the repulsors in the halberd were entirely too lethal to use on people.  
  
Suddenly it didn’t matter. Dauntless was there and the Lees were down with two swings of his lance. Lung fell unceremoniously to the floor, and Dauntless looked stunned to see Armsmaster.  
  
“Flip him on his face.” The hero didn’t argue with his command but he didn’t act as Armsmaster skidded to a halt. A clone had dissolved into ash making the problem of which one to deal with first moot. He ripped the belts and holsters off the teleporter, there were several interesting looking devices on them, before ripping part of the villain’s costume to make a crude blindfold. He finished with a dose of his tranquilizer, Dauntless’s arc lance had previously been very inconsistent on how long it incapacitated people, and he felt better with something he’d made keeping Oni Lee out.  
  
“Let’s get them to the cells, with any luck we’ll have broken the ABB today.”  
  
Dauntless shook his head, the gesture looking ridiculous from a man dressed as a hoplite, before explaining. “They’ve got a tinker, the Cornell bomber. She must have been stockpiling for the push against the Empire because it seems like every little gang of them has some bizarre bomb. She froze the entire bay, the ABB attacked across it, and Arcadia is burning with some fire that won’t go out.”  
  
It was lucky Tony had left when he did, he wouldn’t have wanted his friend to see this part of Bet.  
  
It was luckier that he was back. “The ABB won’t be a problem for long, I’ve made some upgrades.”


	8. Education

The undersuit for his armor was studded with biometric sensors, the data indicated he was slightly dehydrated, but as he stepped into his greaves he’d never felt better. It was an involved process to don the armor without assembler arms, Stark’s briefcase armor was mostly a gimmick, but it had immense utility. In contrast, he had to carefully hold each piece in place until latches, locking dogs, or screws cycled into place.  
  
He had to build the armor up so that it could hold its own weight, which left him largely immobile as he put it on. Putting the components in positions that he could reach them was an exercise in planning and flexibility. Careful attention was needed because once some parts were on they needed power to remove, and any mistake could leave him trapped. Eventually he got the breastplate on and the arc reactor hummed to life. From there it was easy as his servos carried the armors weight and his agility returned to match that he had without an inch of exotic alloy plate encumbering him. There was a brief moment of claustrophobia as his helmet locked on, then his suit finished booting up and his vision filled with readouts.  
  
A trooper, he thought it was Simmons but without his IFF it was hard to keep track, was waiting for him. His ultrasound could give him a picture of his face through the opaque helmet, but he didn’t need it.  
  
“Ready to authorize my entry to the tactical net?” His voice through the suits external speakers was harsh, Stark had originally planned for some sort of vigilante career and had adjusted the voice modifier to cause distress in most listeners. Colin hadn’t bothered to change it, but based on the surprise of the veteran trooper he might have to. He hadn’t missed PR.  
  
“Right away sir.” Simmons punched in his code and Armsmaster’s HUD indicated a pairing request. A blink authorized it and information flooded him. He was back.  
  
“Console this is Armsmaster, preparing to deploy.” He strode for the elevator, he’d be leaving from the roof.  
  
“It’s good to hear your voice.” Militia sounded ragged, and he could hear heavy breathing and engines in the background. “The Empire is out in force, Purity is-“  
  
“I’ll handle Purity.” The elevator had reached the helipad and he strode out, checking that his collapsed halberd was firmly secured.  
  
The night was cloudy, but illuminated by street lights and fires. Medhall’s normal glaring spire was dark, a twitch of his eyes revealed the true reason, it was entirely gone. “Find Purity.” He’d downloaded his tactical library into his armor, through image recognition and other factors, such as burning like magnesium, it could identify and locate parahumans within range of his sensors.  
  
He hardly needed it to find the Nazi enforcer as she dropped from the cloud layer and sent a helical beam scouring into the docks.  
  
He didn’t know what she was firing at, but that sort of force was impossible to be controlled. There were normally conventions in the fights between parahumans, she had moved beyond them.  
  
Repulsors flung him into the air, and he rocketed through the cloud layer in less than a second. Purity was powerful, but she relied on her speed and flight to avoid damage. He sketched a parabolic arc towards her current position and burned until he reached his apex where his thrusters cut off.  
  
He dropped silently towards the black expanse of clouds, but his sensors couldn’t miss the shining blaster. Armsmaster cycled through his weapons, the plasma caster was out, his rail guns were empty, the sonic taser, that could work, past that he had actual tasers and containment foam.  
  
Purity had ascended back into the cloud layer, probably staying hidden and safe until she was needed for fire support. She hadn’t moved enough and he was able to correct his flight path just through his flaps.  
  
His flight computer activated to flip him around in position less than a second before impact, she didn’t even have time to react before he slammed into her and sent fifty thousand volts through her. The sonic taser and adaptive tranquilizer followed before he felt confident she was out and he began a sprint back to the rig.  
  
“Console, this is Armsmaster. Purity is down, RTB.”  
  
“Acknowledged.” The slight pause before the response fueled him. They’d forgotten what he could do, forgotten what he was capable of. They’d remember.  
  


* * *

  
Crusader waited as his ghosts dealt with the last of the rabble. The Protectorate was coming out in force and Kaiser had chosen to meet them. Victor and Othala were the only ones who weren’t mustering, the girl’s healing was needed to keep the unpowered soldiers fighting.  
  
He scanned the skies, absently noting that his enemies had broken and were retreating, Purity should be arriving soon unless she got caught up supporting other members. He didn’t see her helical blasts striking, but she could have descended for a more personal touch.  
  
The whine of an engine dragged his attention back to earth as Cricket and Stormtiger exited a blacked-out SUV. Cricket had blood on her arms, but from her tactics that didn’t mean she was injured. Stormtiger simply looked exhilarated, the enforced lull after Hookwolf’s capture and trip to the Birdcage hadn’t sat well with him. Cricket was always hard to read, but he thought he saw a grin behind her mask as his ghosts carried him down.  
  
“How have things gone here?” There was an edge to Stormtiger’s voice as he looked around at the remains of the fight. Shell casings gleamed in the streetlights and at least one body was visible in the shadows. The Asians hadn’t quite been prepared for the empire to stir itself, even with their bombs. There was something of a historical parallel in that Crusader thought, but the pit fighters wouldn’t appreciate it.  
  
“They came, they saw, they were conquered.” Kaiser would have liked that, he always preferred to dress up what they did in a veneer of civilization. “And on your end?”  
  
“No difficulties, grenades are only a threat if they get to you.” Cricket’s voice was as discordant as ever. “If you ever feel the need to see some Asian sculpture there’s some new statues over on Fifth and Jefferson.”  
  
“The tinker?” None of the bombs he’d seen had been too special, but they seemed particularly easy to trigger. More than one of the explosions he’d seen had come after the man at the center had fallen.  
  
“The bitch has made some bombs that do weird shit.” Stormtiger stretched as more of the Empire arrived. “Don’t let them get close.”  
  
Kaiser, his Valkyries, and Rune flew in on steel disks, settling down silently as Kaiser grew a throne out of his. He had no doubt timed it to make an entrance, something that worried Crusader as their leader was also searching the sky.  
  
“Night and Fog are occupied.” If he was nervous about his ex-wife’s tardiness it wasn’t audible. “They’ve uncovered what they believe to be a lead on the bomber’s workshop.” The twins moved to flank him, each growing to around ten feet in height. “Despite their absence we will engage the Protectorate and give our men time to scour the filth from our streets.”  
  
“Where’s Purity?” Cricket asked the question he’d been wondering. “We’ll need her if we have to disengage.”  
  
“She’s fighting Armsmaster.” Kaiser didn’t appear at all happy to relate that news. “He’s apparently taken the field after his impromptu resurrection. I expect that Purity will restore his previous status.”  
  
“He doesn’t seem to have lost-“  
  
A thunderclap split the night, the white flash of lightning blinding.  
  
Crusader blinked to try to clear his watering eyes as he stood. Stormtiger looked as shaken as he did, they’d been closest to the epicenter. He spun, spawning ghosts around him all looking for Cricket, her reflexes must have let her dodge- she was gone.  
  
The twins were swelling as they took up more defensive positions around Kaiser. Stormtiger’s claws were materializing as he too searched for his partner.  
  
“Did anyone see anything?” Kaiser’s armor was growing thicker, a nervous tic if he’d ever seen one. “Stormtiger? What do you smell?”  
  
“Ozone, and burnt-”  
  
The thunder was as jarring the second time, and Stormtiger lost control of his blades. Crusader was flung into the air, only years of practice letting his projections catch him before he hit the ground. He already knew what he would see as he turned, Stormtiger had vanished too.  
  
“Rune! Get us out of here!” The girl suited actions to words, swiftly lifting the platforms they’d arrived on into the air and Crusader followed.  
  
“Where the hell is Purity?” Once again Crusader was spared the necessity of questioning Kaiser. “If there’s a mover that quick-“  
  
For a third time the night went white.  
  
Crusader couldn’t help but think Kaiser would like that, then he shook his head furiously- he was punch drunk. Standing on metal plates while an enemy attacked with lightning had proven to be a terrible idea. One of the twins was down, they couldn’t travel with Rune while enlarged, and Kaiser’s armor seemed to be fused at the knee as he limped. Rune was in whichever, Fenja’s, arms with spasms running down her arms and legs when something crashed into the street.  
  
A keening whine filled the air, and Crusader locked up. His ghosts could still move, but his body was frozen, his limbs were twitching as all his muscles contracted at once.  
  
The tinker, he could see the armor now, hadn’t waited for them to recover. He launched containment foam at the fallen forms of Kaiser and Menja, she couldn’t grow out of it, before pulling a weapon from his back.  
  
A halberd- Armsmaster!  
  
Crusader launched his ghosts at the hero, the fanciest armor in the world couldn’t stop his blades, but he leapt out of the way and screaming rockets drove him towards Fenja. He stabbed Rune and the giant with the haft of his polearm before turning to face him.  
  
“The Empire is over.” The arrogance in the statement burned. “It was over as soon as I came back.”  
  
His ghosts were still closing, but the tinker didn’t seem to care as a hatch on his shoulder flipped open. There was the slightest glare as a laser flashed, then Crusader felt the searing heat of lightning and merciful darkness followed.


	9. Exchanges

“All set.” Tony shut down the equipment that briefly synchronized the universes, and the hum that he’d felt in his bones faded away. When he and Colin had started the project, he’d been imagining something far more violent, a tear in the universe ringed with blue flames or something, but it ended up being much more subtle. Arranging the properties of one universe to match those of another so closely that molecules in the macro scale could go into the field in one world and come out the other seemed like fringe science, but it had worked.   
  
“Your friends on the other side aren’t going to be storming through guns blazing?” The teleporter, TELEPORTER, Tony wasn’t really accustomed to containing his enthusiasm, had watched with some interest to start, but had grown increasingly antsy as he waited. Rhodey had gone through the elaborate protocols that he and Colin had devised with all too much pleasure, he was an air force man and the checklists had spoken to something inside of him.  
  
“Well he’s always wanted to be Doug Masters, so even if he did he’d probably wait till it was more dramatic.”  
  
“You guys had Iron Eagle too?” The teleporter straightened up from his slumped posture as Tony collected the waveguides. It was lucky that they’d brought them, Jarvis had spent unanticipated hours prior their first attempt trying to find the right universe, they had whipped together some targeting aids as they waited.  
  
“Yeah, and I’ve got to say that this whole thing with eerily similar pop culture is probably going to make me freak out when it really hits me.”  
  
“That’s nothing, I’ve got a dimensional clone.” Tony shot a glance at the man, he was probably in his mid-thirties which meant he’d been born before Aleph and Bet diverged. “I’ve never met him of course, I don’t know what I’d say, but it’s a real odd thing to think about.”  
  
“You’ve never sent him a letter? I wouldn’t be able to resist.”  
  
Strider shook his head. “Two paths diverged you know? Powers are a cosmic accident, and I doubt a midwestern boy like me normally gets to travel the world. We’re just a coincidence of genetics now.”  
  
“Well Armsmaster had never heard of me, and a quick search on the web reveals I don’t exist here, but I still think it would be interesting.”  
  
“Interesting is one of those words I’ve learned to stay away from. Now, when I got whistled up to take you to the middle of nowhere Texas,” Round Rock was comparatively thriving on this world, “I got asked to see if you’d be up for meeting the Chief Director of the PRT.”  
  
“It’s after midnight, she won’t wait until tomorrow?”  
  
“The west coast, and Pacific time. It’s great for sports, surfing, and apparently meeting interdimensional travelers who are somewhat agnostic on the whole business hours thing.”  
  
“Well when you say it like that, how can I refuse?”  
  
“Swell.” The cape exaggerated his accent, the shift in the E told him more than Strider probably intended, it was typical of the Northern Cities Vowel Shift which probably put him in or around St. Louis. Tony hadn’t learned much chemistry in college, but the book on accents by areas he’d read during the one lecture he’d attended had been surprisingly informative.  
  
The thunder of the teleport and the brief vacuum warnings of his suit slowed him down for a second, and then he was somewhere else. He’d incorporated stellar navigation in preparation for the trip, and after an atypically long time, the smog was thick, it told him what he already knew. He was in LA.  
  
Strider tipped his cap, and vanished with a crack.  
  
The guards at the door were keeping a very close watch on him, their hands not moving towards their weapons but they clearly wished they were. Tony was about to try to defuse the situation when they both looked up and relaxed. He followed their gaze and saw a dark shape descending. It took an actual effort of will to realize it wasn’t a kite, a puppet, or an optical illusion. “You will believe a man can fly.”  
  
His external speakers were disabled by default, which was somewhat lucky as he didn’t think that she’d have appreciated the confusion. Alexandria, he could recognize her from Colin’s description, landed silently, her heavy cape barely swaying as she touched down.  
  
“Feinstein, Rogers, he’s with me.” The guards’ concerns assuaged she turned to Tony, giving his armor a quick inspection that lingered on his concealed weapons. “Iron Man. Before you meet the director, I’d like to thank you for helping Armsmaster return.”  
  
“My pleasure, it’s not every day that one gets to jump through universes.”  
  
“Regrettably that is the case.” Tony followed her through the sliding doors, from up close what he’d thought was tinted glass was revealed to be a hologram over an inch of some not immediately discernable material. “I’m sure Armsmaster mentioned it, but there’ve been tensions with the only world we’ve been in detailed contact with. Having a smoother interaction with yours is no doubt going to be something of a priority.”  
  
“Well I’m a private citizen-“  
  
“Yes, I read Armsmaster’s report.”  
  
“Of course he wrote one. Like I was saying, I’m not in charge of much but I believe my government shares the same goals.” They passed into an atrium with balconies ringing it and offices behind them. Alexandria’s eyes rose to the top, the only floor with most of the lights still on. “So do you ever take elevators here?”  
  
Her head twitched back to him, and he could see a smile. “I don’t even use front doors when I’ve a choice.”  
  
“Mundane utility, I like it.”  
  
“Superpowers do have perks. Despite that, I suspect that we should use the more common way up. I’ve seen enough rocket driven suits to know that they make a bit of noise and there’s troopers asleep here.”  
  
“Reality intrudes.”  
  
Alexandria pushed the button, and elevator doors opened in response. “It does that.”  
  
They reached the top floor very quickly, Tony’s suit didn’t record anywhere near enough acceleration for the trip, and they stepped into the lair of the Chief Director. “I don’t think she’ll ask about too much for now, probably platitudes, but if she’s too annoying I’d like to remind you that the Protectorate as a whole is grateful.”  
  
This time the glass door was actually glass, and the woman behind the desk stood to greet them.  
  
“Thanks for bringing him, Alexandria.”  
  
“Of course, Iron Man, this is Chief Director Costa-Brown, Rebecca, this is Iron Man.” The director came around her desk to shake his hand, and Tony barely had to look down to meet her eyes. He suspected that without his armor he’d actually be looking straight ahead if not up, but as he’d said the suit was a prosthetic.  
  
“Call me Tony, Tony Stark.” His faceplate flipped up, and by the time his vision was unobscured any hint of surprise by them was gone. “I don’t exist here, and my identity is public on my world.”  
  
“Of course, Mr. Stark.” She went back to her desk and waved them to take seats in front of her. One of them was much more solid than the other, and he assumed that it was meant for the people who broke regular chairs. He settled into it, and the normal protests of furniture beneath his armor were entirely absent. He took the chance to study her, and couldn’t help but feel a little jealousy. She had one of the faces that didn’t age, and unlike him her hair wasn’t even showing hints of grey. Someone in charge of battling superpowered menaces should look a little more haggard at quarter to eleven.  
  
“First, I’d like to officially impart the gratitude of the United States for your assistance to Armsmaster, both in returning him and for bringing him into contact with legitimate authorities.” There was the slightest edge to the word legitimate, and Tony wondered what exactly Colin had written about his SHIELD interactions. “Second, there are several dangers to interdimensional travels that are quite restricted information. It would be grossly negligent of me to not inform you as soon as possible.”  
  
Platitudes right. He glanced at Alexandria, and she scrupulously didn’t meet his gaze.  
  
“Well that’s nice to know I guess, and you’re welcome.”  
  
“Armsmaster didn’t know, we’ve gone to rather thorough lengths to ensure that very few do. Did he tell you anything about the Endbringers?”  
  
The question seemed rhetorical, but Tony wasn’t one to not answer questions. “City killing monsters, impossibly strong.”  
  
“That’s the gist of it, yes. One in particular takes steps to ruin long term plans.”  
  
“The Simurgh, Armsmaster wouldn’t tell me too much.” Colin had in fact been visibly uncomfortable about the subject, only sharing information about the battle where he’d first seen interdimensional effects. Their version wasn’t at all similar to Haywire’s, which left the tinker visibly relieved.  
  
“Understandable, he was in Madison when it attacked.”  
  
The Chief Director nodded at Alexandria’s interjection. “The Simurgh has ruined several efforts to evacuate Bet, mostly publicly a space habitat.”  
  
“Yeah, I heard about that.” The little asides Colin tossed off about the horrors of his world would be a source of nightmares if he stopped to think about them.  
  
“What wasn’t shared was that several tinkers in Madison were working on replicating Professor Haywire’s work to allow for an exodus. Some were driven mad, all the data was destroyed, and the rest were killed. It’s possible, even likely, that the Simurgh will try again.”  
  
Tony swallowed. The thought of Endbringers in his home, he’d seen images of New York after Behemoth, was sobering. “You think that she’ll try to prevent the spread of our tech?”  
  
She nodded. Without his faceplate he couldn’t quite control the suit though facial expressions. “Easy solution then, Jarvis, package up the specs for the transporter in that format Armsmaster uses.”  
  
“Of course, Sir.” Jarvis’s voice sounded loud in the silent office. Neither woman seemed surprised, apparently Colin’s report had been extremely thorough and they were both speed readers.  
  
“Got an email, or a network address? Sadly USBs aren’t EUSBs.”  
  
The director hesitated, but before could say no the silence was broken. “Spreading the technology will reduce the risk.” Alexandria’s voice sharpened. “And a mature portal device will-“  
  
“I know.” For the first time Costa-Brown looked tired, massaging her forehead. “It’s just hard not to start second guessing where the Simurgh is involved.” She continued kneading for a second before she looked up and reached for a phone. “Of course, and thank you. I’ll call up IT to set-“  
  
“No need, I can handle it.” Alexandria moved to the keyboard, and her fingers blurred. “Did Armsmaster share any of our network protocols?”  
  
“Yeah, WIFI and IPv6.”  
  
“Then log into the public network-“  
  
“Thank you, Ma’am, I’ve got it.” Jarvis’s casual competency was barely acknowledged.   
  
“This will be big, even without Armsmaster’s return, and his dismantling of parahuman crime in Brockton Bay-“  
  
“Wait, what? It’s barely been three hours- when did he have time for that?” The last he’d seen Colin was going into quarantine, which reminded him he probably should have kept his faceplate down and air filters going.  
  
“Your takedown of Lung kicked over something of a hornet’s nest.”  
  
“It’s lucky bug girl is there then.” For the first time, they both seemed confused. “Some new heroine, controls bugs.” They accepted the explanation without blinking, Earth Bet seemed to inculcate a certain unflappability.  
  
“Right. In any case Armsmaster was able to take down the remaining major gang in a series of strikes, Brockton Bay is safer now that it’s been in years.”  
  
“Good for him then.” Tony hadn’t been able to tell if Colin truly liked Brockton Bay, or if he’d just been dedicated to his job. In any case it was good he’d dealt with the various criminals, they’d clearly weighed on him. “So what else do you want from me? I’ve sort of been planning on a little sightseeing, but do I need a visa or something?”  
  
“I had been thinking that the right thing to do would be simply get you back to your world as quickly as possible, but if you wish to stay and a few of our Thinkers agree that the risk is minimal, then you’re welcome too.”  
  
That seemed suspiciously reasonable, especially in comparison to SHIELD’s reaction, but Tony didn’t feel like arguing it.   
  
Alexandria stood, and Tony rose after her. “Well then, assuming it all checks out, how am I getting back to Brockton Bay?”  
  
“Strider has retired for the evening, but we do have a member of the Protectorate here who’s somewhat excited to meet you. Blackbird specializes in high speed vehicles, and she’ll trade you a forty-minute trip to the East Coast in exchange for a chat about your rockets.” He followed her out of the office and towards another reinforced door that led to a helipad.  
  
Four thousand miles per hour give or take, not bad. “Sure, sounds like a plan.”  
  
The black clad cape looked over her shoulder with a grin visible beneath her helmet. “Then follow me, and try to keep up.”


	10. Avenging

Armsmaster broke out of the water, his repulsors launching him from the spray as he dragged two parahumans with him. Between his HUD and the armbands he could know everything about them with three commands each, but after pulling enough limp bodies from the ocean he didn’t care anymore.  
  
Leviathan had come and gone, its purpose as ever inscrutable beyond causing as much damage as possible. He was soaked inside his armor, he wasn’t sure if it was just sweat or if a seal had broken. He’d never been struct directly by the Endbringer, but even glancing blows could kill. It was the first Endbringer he’d fought in the year since he’d returned from Gimel, the others had been too far away for him to reach. Before he’d traversed universes he’d been working on a program to predict their attacks, after being reminded of the carnage they produced he vowed to finish it.  
  
His weapons that had worked so well against parahumans hadn’t affected the beast at all. He’d hoped that the time stopping fields would be decisive, but as ever Endbringers resisted esoteric effects. The generator had burnt out after a split second, and it never affected more than a small part of the monster’s body. Other things had, but Armsmaster didn’t need to duplicate them. If he was able to predict the attacks the heroes would be there next time.  
  
That would have to wait though, his sensors had detected another armband with life signs, so he dove back into the flood.  
  


* * *

“I’m glad you made it.”  
  
The penthouse at Stark Tower perfectly fit its owner and designer. It was the complete opposite of reserved, while somehow staying just barely on the side of taste. Or at least that’s that what Tony had said while waxing rhapsodically about it. Colin was quite sure he didn’t know any interior decorators, so he had declined to take a position. He did think that there was a lot of wasted space though.  
  
“Your reactors have been the solution to nearly all the engineering problems I’ve faced recently.” In the last few months he’d done far more tinkering than he’d expected, he hadn’t recognized how much of his time was filled with planning and leadership of his team. Being seconded to the Guild had let him focus on single missions, his performance against the Empire had opened eyes. “It’s nice to have the time to see a large-scale production model go into operation.”  
  
Part of him was annoyed that he was no longer a hero-commander, but the Brockton job had always been a stepping stone. He’d taken the free time and temporary fame to visit other tinkers, the only major one whose lab he hadn’t seen was Dragons just because as she noted that he already knew everything that was going on there. He had recognized the excuse for what it was, a particularly acute case of agoraphobia. He wouldn’t want anything that reminded him of his trigger, and if he could help his friend by giving her space he would.  
  
Besides, she was almost always connected. Part of her efforts to discover what had happened to him had led her to new communication technologies, ones that could pierce universal barriers. It was low bandwidth, barely enough for low quality audio, but it didn’t need a powerplant to hold open a small physical connection. She had seemed to enjoy the pictures and records he’d had of Earth-Gimel, sending her a slow stream as he toured this new world was the least he could do. It almost reminded him of his childhood, when friends and family would come over with a slide carousel and show off vacation pictures. Hopefully of course she actually enjoyed them for more than the chance to get free time without her parents hovering.  
  
“Also you want to see if your modifications yield the expected gains.” Tony had slid a tumbler of an amber liquid across the long bar as he spoke, Colin naturally caught it but it had been almost perfectly thrown, speaking to long practice with broken glasses or natural talent.  
  
“Perhaps a little.”  
  
“Did you manage to straighten out all the consequences of your reported death?” Pepper had been seated on a couch, reading a tablet as the two tinkers had chatted. “Tony has never appreciated all the work that went into keeping him legally alive.”  
  
Colin just gave a vague affirmative grunt, it had been all too easy for everything but his employment. His townhouse was fully paid off and the maid service made sure all the maintenance was done biweekly. In what turned out to be a particularly far sighted action he’d left a provision in his will to keep the house apparently active for a year after his death. He hadn’t wanted his identity and any repercussions of it to be exposed. Spending most of his time in a mask and armor had left few other things that needed to be sorted out, and he had plenty of free time to do it in.  
  
“Although I think she took the chance to end a few subscriptions and memberships while I was a bit preoccupied.” Tony poured himself a tumbler of the alcohol as he needled his CEO.  
  
“Only AM&P, your letters to their editor were getting out of hand.”  
  
“It’s not my fault that they won’t admit defeat.” He gestured widely with the hand not holding his drink, “if they won’t concede that nickel based super alloys are played out they don’t deserve to call themselves material engineers.”  
  
“I thought you liked Inconel.”  
  
“Not anymore, your teleporter sprays out enough beta particles that I need lighter molecular structures, I’m looking at ceramics, polymers and maybe some carbon fibers.”  
  
“Those are a pain to modify though.” It was a formulaic complaint, Tony had the resources to just build fresh versions whenever the thought struck him. Colin had to be more concerned with recyclability, especially now that he didn’t control an entire division’s tinker budget. “Have you considered implementing hard light shields? They can’t do much but they do stop radiation almost perfectly.” Not well enough for Behemoth who simply produced heat and gamma rays throughout his radius, but a lot of new tinkers felt that ray weapons were a good first project. They often didn’t enjoy the second time they used them as much.  
  
“I’m not sure, the emitters you showed me took up a lot of room to generate arbitrary shapes and ideally I’d be able to fit the targeting suit on under regular clothes. Maybe we could-“  
  
“Sorry to interrupt, Sir, but you have a guest.” Jarvis was omnipresent in the tower,  
  
“Tell them I’m not in.” Tony was pulling up his modeling software and Pepper looked resigned to another evening of mocking their enthusiasm.  
  
“Agent Coulson is being insistent, Sir.”  
  
“Wiggle the foam sprayers at him, see if he’ll take the hint.”  
  
Tony had traded the arc reactor for containment foam, a deal Colin felt was like buying Manhattan for a few beads. It made sense on some levels, once the arc reactor was known to exist in all its bizarre glory it wasn’t too hard to replicate, but it was worth far more than some clever chemistry that wasn’t too much better that what Tony and he had already made.  
  
“He claims he has a warrant.”  
  
“Does SHIELD even have legal power in the US? I’ve never really been certain as to their justifications-“  
  
Pepper sighed. “Just let him in Jarvis.”  
  
Tony acquiesced, but he didn’t have it in him to give up the last word. “I have a lot of lawyers, finding out what SHIELD’s deal is seems like a way better use of them than whatever they’re doing.”  
  
“It is odd, the US in my world is only part of the ICC because we’re basically in charge of it. Here you aren’t even signed on to the Laws of the Seas and you’ve got an international secret agency calling the shots on parahuman affairs.” The PRT held some similarities, but it was much more firmly rooted in the US, closer to NATO or NAFTA than whatever SHIELD was.  
  
“SHIELD’s weird, no arguments here.”  
  
The elevator chimed as Coulson arrived, and Colin looked over to see the agent enter the room. He looked like the last time he’d seen him, the same suit and expression of bureaucratic indifference. He wasn’t glued to a chair, which was a change, but the night was young.  
  
“Mr. Stark, Ms. Potts, Mr.,” he could almost see the agent’s train of thought stutter before he continued. “Good evening, but I need to speak to Mr. Stark privately.”  
  
“I’ll just tell them anyway and you wouldn’t be here if you didn’t need a self-destructive narcissist.”  
  
The agent didn’t protest further, which more than anything indicated the seriousness. “We need you to find something, and we need it done quickly.”  
  
“I’m flattered, but that’s not really my thing. I stick to making things, flying things, and breaking things.”  
  
“Your father found it, and it’s been stolen.” Coulson opened his briefcase to pull out a heavy folder. The first sheet he pulled, showing a gleaming blue cube didn’t get a reaction, but the second, a picture of a hand drawn hypercube did.  
  
Tony picked it up from the table, staring at the page. “What exactly did you lose?”  
  
“It’s called the tesseract. Hydra had it, we took it, and now it’s been stolen.”  
  
“Someone just waltzed right into a SHIELD base and wandered out with it? Who?”  
  
“Agree to help and we’ll let you know.” The agent’s voice changed, actual nervousness broke through his reserve. “But it’s big.”  
  
“Sure, fine, whatever.” Tony was flipping through the rest of the folder with almost uncanny speed. It was easy to forget how smart he was until he casually did something almost impossible. “Who did it? Martians? Lizardmen? Some SHIELD splinter faction?”  
  
“An alien god.” A different folder landed on the table, pictures spilling out. “He’s already forcibly co-opted several of our agents, and the tesseract provides literally unlimited power. He’s here to conquer.”  
  
Colin walked over, pulling a picture free. The god looked like any other cape, with the notable exception of his missing mask. He held a weapon, the bastard child of a spear and scepter, and in the picture its end had the same hue as the cube.  
  
“What can he do?” There were parahuman conquerors on Bet, given terrifying powers by their triggers, but even the most potent abilities couldn’t stop everything. Masters and strangers had killed more would be kings than he could count, even after his work with the guild. Gimel didn’t have the same diversity of power, one cape might be strong enough to be untouchable in all the ways that matter.  
  
“We don’t know. He’s strong, bulletproof, and he appeared out of nowhere before suddenly gaining the loyalty of numerous trusted agents.” A teleporting brute master, it was an impressive combination, and one Armsmaster wouldn’t want to fight. It was possible that it was a trick, but planning for the worst was the only sensible choice.  
  
“How are you planning to track it?” Tony had a CAD program open and was already sketching as he asked. “It doesn’t just glow does it?”  
  
“Gamma radiation. It gives off a low level, not even enough to be dangerous for direct contact, but that also makes it tricky to spot. We wouldn’t be here if we didn’t need you.”  
  
The atmosphere absorbed gamma radiation, he could do the math as to the decay range but he doubted that the cube would be easily found by existing sensors, even if the thief was stupid enough to leave it in an unshielded container. A millimeter of lead would block it all.  
  
“I’ll see what I can do. Send me everything you’ve got on this thing, and the thief.” Tony was already focused on his design. “And anything else you’ve got of my father’s that’s still boxed away.”  
  
“I’ll do my best Mr. Stark.” Coulson turned for the elevator, leaving the briefcase. “And Armsmaster, it might be good if you could stick around.”


	11. Analysis

“Gamma radiation will leave traces.” Tony didn’t react except to nod distractedly. “There might be other things there that would be useful to find out.”  
  
“SHIELD will have looked for those.” Stark’s design was beginning to take shape, a modified photocell.  
  
“I can see more.” He’d been upgrading his sensors to match his new focus on longer range engagements. Without the focus on marketability he didn’t have to worry about looking good for the civilians. With the Guild it didn’t matter if he dueled a brute chivalrously or hit them with rail gun shells from over the horizon. One was more efficient.  
  
“If they’re not idiots they’ll have put it into a shielded box immediately.”  
  
“Criminals often are idiots.”  
  
“A superstitious and cowardly lot?” Tony waved at the air and satellite imagery appeared, showing activity surrounding a crater. “It looks pretty chaotic, if there’s anything to see- whatever. Give it a shot.”  
  
“Teleportation is often preceded or followed by detectable phenomena, it’s worth investigating just for that.” Armsmaster summoned his armor as he spoke, wishing he had a better interface than his phone.  
  
“I said go for it.” He was clearly lost to the tinkering as he zoomed in on the circuitry. “Have fun down there.”  
  
Maybe some sort of bracer computer would work better. “I’ll keep in touch.” The door to the stairs opened, the pathfinding software he’d traded for couldn’t deal with elevators, and his armor walked towards him. He hadn’t had to worry about putting his armor on when he was in Brockton Bay, he had the lifts and stands that worked perfectly well. Operating without other equipment made him put more functionality in his suit, including autonomous motion.  
  
Without him inside it the armor didn’t look quite right, it was smaller, uncanny. Its strides didn’t match those of a human, nor did its proportions. It might have been easier to just have a void matching his shape, but all the wasted space irked him. By compressing the structure the empty armor was stronger and more robust.  
  
Tony barely watched as it arrived, but Pepper betrayed some of the same symptoms he’d detected from other civilians, a deep unease. It reached him and unfolded before closing around him, something that others had described as a mix of a Venus flytrap attacking and an amoeba engulfing its prey. Eons of evolution only barely approached the elegance he’d engineered.  
  
“How long will it take you to get to New Mexico? Did you crank up the speed at all?” Tony was studying his suit, his appraising eye noting the changes since the last time they’d discussed it.  
  
“I told you I was working with Blackbird right?”  
  
“Yeah, I’ve been emailing with her about sub orbital hops. The FAA isn’t a big fan FYI.”  
  
“Give it a few years, ours has sort of given up in despair.”  
  
“I’ll ignore the implications out of more immediate jealousy. So what’d she say?”  
  
“You’ll see.” Jarvis opened the door to the balcony for him and he strode to the landing pad, no reason to scorch the tiles. A quick radar scan of the sky indicated there was nothing on his planned route, and with a repulsor scream he ascended into the air.  
  
As he passed a critical velocity hardlight projectors engaged, generating a needle point in front of him and delta wings behind. Air slid off the shell, reducing his drag and simultaneously providing lift, allowing all his power to go into driving him forward. He passed Mach three and fifty thousand feet over New Jersey, the carefully designed profile muffling his sonic boom to a dull roar. He’d never gone to full power with it, an alien god seemed like an excellent reason.  
  
The countryside flashed beneath him as he shot southwest. There was only so much preparation he could do without details, and with time to kill he pulled up a different program.  
  
“Dragon, are you free?”  
  
His message was compressed before it sent, a near instantaneous process, but the transmission across the universe was fairly slow. He busied himself with studying the blue prints of the facility as he waited, he’d been in his share of collapsed buildings and knowing the intact layout often provided valuable clues.  
  
Her response was simple text, it was the only way to have something like a conversation in real time.  
  
 _Just setting up accelerated aging tests for the Bolla models. I can talk._  
  
He tried to think of what a Bolla was, Dragon was a bit too committed to her theme in his opinion, and then decided it didn’t matter too much.  
  
“There’s been an attack by a parahuman on a SHIELD facility here. They asked for Stark’s help so I’m taking a look.” His words would be converted into text, and from there into a specialized code that minimized the need to send data.  
  
 _Besides the tinkers it sounded like they didn’t have very powerful parahumans, is this one different?_  
  
Dragon hadn’t been the only one interested in the earlier appearance of powers on Gimel, but the similarity in powers between her and Gimel’s tinkers had kept her attention longer than Legend’s. With the comparative rarity of powers the insights into how societies dealt with the superhuman simply didn’t exist. Legend had been optimistic about what Bet could learn initially, but he hadn’t asked Armsmaster for information in months.  
  
“Hard to say, a teleporting brute master would be a problem anywhere, but initial reports are fragmented.”  
  
 _Some things are constants. Be careful._  
  
“At the risk of tempting fate, I’ve lived through worst.” Colin changed course a little to ensure that a Learjet wouldn’t be too close. On the ground he’d sound like distant thunder, at cruising altitude it would be a bit more dramatic.  
  
 _Just remember it would be awfully embarrassing to be buried in Nevada. The Las Vegas Protectorate team is already so full of themselves._  
  
Colin snorted at that. Satyrical was so proud of his team and their “subtle battles” with the criminals of the casinos. A little less obsession with seeming clever and a bit more focus on kinetic actions would serve them well, not that they’d ever admit it.  
  
“If anything like that happens to me lie. Say my particles are scattered through a million universes, anything to avoid another one of his talks about cops and robbers.”  
  
 _Make it so I don’t have to._  
  
His suit chose that moment to throw his destination onto his HUD, it had finally risen over the horizon. He’d be there in ten minutes, decelerating and descending would drop his average speed, but when he was twenty miles up and doing better than forty miles in a minute it took a lot of space to change course.  
  
“I’ll keep you posted.”  
  
The hard light shell made the flight smoother than Stark’s version, humans just weren’t very aerodynamic, but minor changes in air speed and densities led to constant turbulence that rattled the bones. Tony had been musing about low intensity internal repulsors that would act as inertial dampeners, but Colin couldn’t help but imagine some mishap leading to a pilot being mopped out of a suit. Having repulsors permanently firing at his limbs and brain didn’t seem like a great idea, even if it would be nice to ignore g-forces. In any case he made it to the ground without incident, landing as gracefully as a man in six hundred pounds of exotic alloys could.  
  
The base reminded him of an overturned anthill, not just because of the frantic activity of the black clad agents, but because of the massive sandy crater that had swallowed the facility. He walked with purpose towards the command center, SHIELD’s staff not daring to get into his way. The leaders were concentrated into a shipping container, something that was comforting in its familiarity. He didn’t knock as he entered, but the agent in charge didn’t look up.  
  
“Armsmaster? Agent Coulson told us you were coming.”  
  
The man might be annoying, but he was certainly competent.  
  
“I’m here to lend what help I can. Are there any victims underground still?”  
  
Ground penetrating radar was a technology that sounded extremely useful, but in practice it rarely lived up to its name. He’d done a scan of course, but without time on a supercomputer it wouldn’t tell him much.  
  
“Everyone is accounted for. A few night owls, but the base was almost empty.”  
  
“Do you have video logs?” Armsmaster was interested in seeing the villain’s arrival, but also for any clues as to what caused the collapse. Giant explosions didn’t seem to fit with the powerset that had been mentioned.  
  
“I’m afraid those are classified.” That wouldn’t be much of an impediment. He’d just wait for a new computer to join the network and piggyback his way in. He could of course break in more quickly, but discretion was the better part of valor.  
  
“Which way did the intruder leave?” A spiral search pattern would tell him that, but asking for help made other parties invested in his success.  
  
“North, across the desert to the road, we lost track of them then and couldn’t reestablish contact.”  
  
“I’ll see what I can do.” Leaving the Conex he flipped on his Geiger counter and resisted the urge to swear. It was indicating radiation counts that didn’t bode well for the future children of anyone nearby, and the intensity was such that it was off the charts. His sensor wasn’t meant for high levels, but if radiation counts were still this high hours later anyone hanging around by the Tesseract would be losing hair.  
  
Armsmaster followed a zigzag pattern north, crossing over the radiation trail to ensure he was on the right track, something that the tire tracks in the dirt would show even without advanced equipment. As the agent said the SUV had made it to an asphalt road, the wreckage of a helicopter showing that they had teeth. The aircraft was too damaged by fire and the crash to see exactly what had happened to it, but brutes didn’t lack for options to cause destruction.  
  
His hacking program sent an alert it had intercepted credentials, he stored them for later as he leapt into the air. The trail would go cold if he waited, and he would be bet that Stark had already penetrated SHIELD. He had a villain to catch.  
  
The counts declined as he flew, he stopped every few miles to do a detailed scan, but the gamma source was emitting less radiation and the car was moving fast. It continued to drop, until it abruptly stopped entirely. I-15 was still ahead, and they’d be roughly equidistant from Vegas and Los Angeles, both cities would provide ample opportunities to vanish or travel anywhere.  
  
Armsmaster hung in the air as he thought, to the east he could see the faintest indications of dawn, and then turned back to retrace the trail. The radiation intensity had been declining with time, which suggested that the massive sudden decrease with distance was caused by a change in speed. The vehicle had probably stopped and he’d overshot it.  
  
He went back to the last reading he’d taken and slowly proceeded, looking for evidence of the vehicle leaving the road. There wasn’t anything visible to the naked eye, but he wasn’t so limited. There was a warm patch on the road, with a corresponding spike in radiation. They’d parked in the middle of the road and waited, for what he didn’t know. Maybe they’d just wanted to obscure their trail, maybe they’d had to plan their next step, or perhaps the parahuman had simply mastered an unlucky traveler and switched cars.  
  
Ultimately it didn’t matter, the trail was cold.


	12. Assault

The choice between LA and Las Vegas wasn’t one. G forces compressed Armsmaster’s spine as he launched into the air and arced west, the hard light shields turning him into a flash of golden light. With any luck he’d trick some UFO obsessives, the world could do with a bit more strangeness that wasn’t terrible.   
  
The levity passed quickly as he approached the California border. Loki was a master, and SHIELD didn’t seem like an organization geared to fight one. Secrets and compartmentalization were perfectly fitting in some circumstances, but if a group didn’t account for mind control when the protocols were set up they could be devastating. In the early days of the PRT there’d been numerous cases of Parahumans worming their way into positions of authority, and he’d heard rumors that numerous CIA and NSA black ops programs had simply vanished in the eighties. If Loki was smart and moved quickly he could carve resources free from SHIELD and others before they even knew there was a problem.   
  
That at least made his next step clear, he’d have to check for the characteristic radiation at SHIELD affiliated locations. Under normal circumstances he doubted that they’d cooperate, but crisis had a way of cutting red tape.   
  
“Stark.” His armor put the call through and it rang twice.  
  
“Colin, what’s up?” The tinker’s voice was distracted and he could hear keys being pressed in the background. “Did you make third contact or whatever?”  
  
“Loki’s in the wind, I’m following a lead to Los Angeles.”  
  
“How’s the radiation tracking?”  
  
“As expected it falls off pretty rapidly with distance, and the cube itself seems to have a variable intensity.”  
  
“The trail went cold then.”  
  
“He has to be headed for a city though, there’s nothing else out here.”  
  
“True. Jarvis try to source some larger vacuum chambers that we can pick up immediately.” More sensitive Geiger counters would only get them so far, but before Armsmaster could comment Tony was talking again. “You wouldn’t call if you didn’t think it would be useful. What are you looking for?”  
  
“So far Loki has acquired all his resources from SHIELD. It seems reasonable to assume he’ll continue.”  
  
“So you want to know where SHIELD is there, got it. I’ll send you what I have and get Coulson to get in touch.”  
  
The line went dead just as an email arrived. Opening it showed a list of addresses and images of the SHIELD’s buildings, Jarvis must have put the package together. The AI was just so useful, he really needed to actually make his own, but he kept getting distracted by other projects. Dragon’s ideas were such fun, and it was always a pleasure to work with her that he hadn’t really minded. Next time though.  
  
He discarded the first few items on the list, the main branch in the city was too obvious a target, and as he slowed down and descended he eliminated a few others. Loki needed people, his ultimate goal was unclear but he hadn’t just teleported out of the base with the tesseract. That said, SHIELD was international, it had bases everywhere NATO had once spread and other places besides. Escaping the scene of the crime would mean that the world would have to be searched, not just the southwest. With that in mind the first place to look was obvious.  
  
His phone rang just as he adjusted his course and he started an evasive pattern as he answered. Cell phones were targeting aides for anyone who bothered to think about it, and just because Coulson had been trustworthy two hours ago didn’t mean he was still safe.  
  
“Agent Coulson.”  
  
“Armsmaster. Mr. Stark said you had something for me.” The man’s voice was as level as ever, the sort of anodyne manner Le Carre liked in his protagonists.  
  
“I have to confirm it, but I’m checking out March Air Force Base.” He’d passed over it and had detected elevated radiation levels, but he’d need to be closer to be sure.  
  
“They called in and checked out.” The objection was pro forma, the agent clearly realized that their doctrine was inadequate in the face of mind control. “How long will it take you to get there?”  
  
“Less than a minute.” Most of the time would be spent decelerating, orbiting San Bernardino left him within ten miles and he’d rather not make a sonic boom in case he was mistaken.  
  
“We’ll have a team choppered in to meet you there in five. They’ll call this number.”  
  
The delay was astonishingly short, but Coulson wasn’t used to dealing with flyers. “Give me their transponder and I’ll meet them in the air.”  
  
“Right.” Armsmaster set his own, he was tempted to put 4400, but went with a slightly more discreet 4003. “They’re 1277, expect their call.”  
  
They were flying from closer to downtown, and moving fast. It looked something like a Blackhawk, the last major helicopter class the US military had ordered on Bet before shifting to a more artisan procurement strategy, but he had a hard time getting a lock on it. Its thermal signature was muddled, and as he got closer the blades weren’t as loud as he expected. He took up a position above and behind them, waiting for them to contact him.  
  
He didn’t waste the time, running diagnostics on his systems. Everything should be fine, but a few hours of supersonic flight and general activity could cause problems with the more delicate functions. Luckily nothing came back as a problem, even the newer stuff. He changed his HUD from normal to combat mode, it had been strange to program one that didn’t default to battle ready, and went back to waiting. This time when he received a call it was only an alert, and a low priority one compared to the potential events he’d care about while fighting.  
  
“This is Armsmaster.” He didn’t know what to expect from the SHIELD agents, if they’d be more unflappable Coulson clones, something more like PRT agents, or even soldiers. Until he found out professionalism was the best choice.  
  
“Roger that, this is Blue Lead. We’re tasked with assisting you in checking buildings thirty three, thirty four and hanger nine.” Armsmaster dropped to fly at the side of the helicopter, inside it he could see men in tactical gear cradling weapons. Better than bureaucrats.  
  
“I’m going ahead to circle the site at a distance of one klick, to look for more evidence of Loki. Once you reach that distance I’ll go loud to attract any attention from potential hostiles to cover your landing.”  
  
“Affirmative.” He barely waited for the response before racing forward, leaving the helicopter behind him like it was standing still. G forces pressed him as he turned, five times his weight lying on his chest. It wasn’t his record, but that was one Armsmaster had no interest in matching before potentially getting into a firefight.  
  
The spike in gamma radiation made the potential an actuality.   
  
“Blue Lead, the target was here. I’m going in.” He turned his smooth curve into a helix, this time the acceleration was enough to make his vision go fuzzy at the edges before he bled off his speed with a roar of repulsors and a parachute shaped hard light shield. He hit the ground at a run, and the door a second later with his shoulder at a sprint.  
  
The heavy metal smashed into the wall, temporarily drowning out the sudden alarms. He held his hand to his side, and with a flash of blue and a wash of radiation his halberd materialized in his grip. His first adversary came into view, a pistol in his hands to emphasize his shouts to stand down. He ignored them.  
  
“Where’s Loki?” His voice was harsh, and it boomed through the external speakers. He didn’t get a verbal answer.  
  
The first shot pinged off his helmet, for the second he yielded to theatricality and deflected it with his blade. Blocking a bullet after it had been fired would take incredible speed, being in position ahead of time just took planning and simple software. He advanced, his servos twitching his relaxed arm as it solved the math problem of intercepting a single vector. The man ran out of bullets and flung the gun as he charged. One slash left the gun a glowing ruin before he grabbed the man by the collar of his vest and slammed him into the drywall.  
  
Up close he could see that the man’s eyes were an electric blue, the same shade as the tesseract and Loki’s staff. He wouldn’t get anything out of this one, but a visible symptom of the mastering was potentially incredibly useful. The sonic taser dropped the agent to the ground and kept him there as Armsmaster advanced further into the base.  
  
“Blue Lead this is Armsmaster, I’ve encountered opposition. Small arms only so far.” With his ranged EKG he could see others through the walls, they were moving into ambush positions. Unless they had heavy weapons he’d be fine.  
  
“We’re three zero seconds out.”  
  
“I’ll ensure they’re looking at me.” The electrolaser wasn’t an indoor weapon. Lightning was an incredibly energetic phenomenon, and thunder could cause severe damage to unshielded equipment and personnel at close range.   
  
It did work well as a distraction. The wall he’d targeted disintegrated, and he smashed through it just after. Even deafened and blinded the agents were trying to fight, one sprayed half a magazine at him but only managed to hit one of his allies before the room was blanketed in containment foam. It was inefficient, he could have cleared the room without expending munitions, but the brainwashed soldiers weren’t rational enough to care about the others’ safety.   
  
There was nothing he could do for them now though, and he could see more gathering on the floors above him. A repulsor burst cleared the obstruction and he lightly jumped through the hole he’d made. It didn’t go unnoticed, the agents on the upper floors were converging on him. The first to arrive was a man in business casual, with his gut hanging over his belt.   
  
Armsmaster just tripped him with the haft of his halberd before firing off the sonic taser. Hopefully his heart wasn’t too weak, but it was the mildest weapon he possessed.  
  
The next was more usual, a woman in a bullet proof vest cradling a gigantic rifle. He didn’t feel bad about hitting her with the electrolaser. The resultant brilliant Lichtenberg figure tracing across her prone body would eventually fade he rationalized as he stepped over her and into the hallway.  
  
A hail of bullets met him, and like hail bounced off. He paced deliberately towards the agents as they fired and frantically reloaded, the more ammunition shot at him the less that could be aimed at Blue team. They didn’t run as he advanced, the mastered agents didn’t feel fear or pain as his blows broke bones.   
  
Loki’s will could only take them so far, by the time Blue team entered the building he was surrounded by disabled enemies. Conveniently the pain or trauma had broken the master effect on at least one of them, the man’s eyes had gone from the startling blue back to more mortal shades. It could be a trick though, and as none of them were in immediate danger he stood ready for further violence.  
  
Below him he could see his backup coming into the building, a tight knot of men carefully checking the doors and corners. “I’m on the second floor, there are no active hostiles with heartbeats.”  
  
“Roget that.” It took a second for Armsmaster to realize how he’d sounded, naturally the agents wouldn’t think that hostiles without heartbeats could be an issue. They probably assumed he’d killed them all. They’d discover otherwise soon enough.  
  
After what felt like an interminable wait he got his first look at blue team at eye level. Considering that they didn’t look as shaken as men expecting a psychopath should he guessed they’d figured out he hadn’t carved his way through the base.  
  
“Loki’s victims can be distinguished by bright blue eyes.” He picked one up, taking care not to jostle his broken leg. One of the agents sensibly took a picture. “They haven’t been forthcoming, but I haven’t asked questions yet.”  
  
“Please, I’ll talk!” It was the man he’d nearly knocked out, his head was covered in blood. Armsmaster felt a little guilty over that, he’d assumed that the agent would fight in something approaching a normal matter and had accidently clipped his skull when he’d been forced to shield the man from another agent’s hidden handgun. The man in Armsmaster’s grasp twitched and the others on the ground tried to attack the speaker, but it was simple enough to change which agent he was carrying and remove him from the others.  
  
“Agent Robbins.” Blue Leader seemed to recognize the man. “What’s your authentication code?” Armsmaster was tempted to interrupt, clearly Loki’s orders ensured that his minions were able to avoid suspicion, but from the tone he could tell Blue Leader was trying to establish a rapport, or at least some sense of normality.  
  
“Six three nine nine two eight.” Robbins had a desperate air as he said it, and Armsmaster set him down on unsteady legs.  
  
“What happened here agent?”  
  
“I don’t know! We got orders to prep the quinjets, and then this green guy with a spear was jabbing us all in the chest and told us to keep quiet.” He took a deep and gasping breath, on the edge of shock if Armsmaster was any judge. “And we did! We did, and I don’t know why!”  
  
“We need to know where he went Agent Robbins.” Blue Leader had his hands on the man’s shoulders and was staring into his eyes, as if he could stave off a panic attack by grip strength. “What can you tell us?”  
  
Oddly enough it worked, Robbins swallowed nervously twice before answering with a shaky voice. “They went east after taking off, that’s all I know.”  
  
“Unfortunate.” It was sensible of the supervillain, but certainly inconvenient. “Interrogate the others, this one is the only one I hit in the head, perhaps cranial trauma disrupted Loki’s control.” The whole world was east of Los Angeles and the quinjets were stealthy. He’d probably flown right over them on his way here, but it still made sense to chase them. “Inform me if there are other pertinent developments.”  
  
The mastered agents had opened the windows to create firing positions, and Armsmaster stepped onto the sill before turning back to look at Blue team. “One of the men downstairs in the foam has a gunshot wound. It should have ensured he didn’t lose too much blood.” He stepped into empty air as his repulsors fired, the sky beckoned.

**Author's Note:**

> So this is Agents and SHIELD at least for now until/if a better title comes to mind. Updates are likely to be sporadic, but I hope you all enjoy it.


End file.
